Daily Devotionals

Bowen's Daily Meditations

Devotional: June 29th

" Thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance.’’ - Psalms 32:7.

If one want poetry, there is a whole poem in these few words. Heaven, earth; time, eternity; saints, angels; the redeemed soul; its sins, passions, frailties, woes, miseries fleeing in the distance; - such, and more, are the characters and the scenery presented to our imagination, or to our faith, as we gaze into this verse. Perhaps some reminiscence of what he had himself experienced in his earthly career, visited the mind of David, and assisted him to form a bright conception of what God would do for him hereafter. He may have recalled the morning when his offer to go forth and meet Goliath, elicited only shouts of derision; and the evening of the same day when he was compassed about with songs of deliverance uttered by the host of the Israelites, while the surviving Philistines were fleeing overwhelmed with confusion, to their own borders.

A person known to us once had a dream, which may help to illustrate the text. He had been very recently brought to the knowledge of Christ’s saving truth. He dreamt that he found himself in an open plain; when suddenly a terrible being appeared, from whom he felt that he must escape, if he would not forever perish. The only object that his eye could discern was a small and rather mean-looking house. To this he fled; entered it; and feeling that he was pursued, passed through it, and through a yard, that was attached to it. Presently he found himself at the foot of a mighty precipice that rose as perpendicularly as a wall, and towered above the skies. The enemy was upon him. He felt that he must go up this wall-like precipice, or be lost; so he attempted the ascent. His hands were here of no use; for there was nothing for them to seize; and he had to plant his feet, in defiance of all laws of gravitation, horizontally against the wall. Yet ho was actually enabled to mount up in this way. A prodigious effort was needed at first; (yet, if there had been no invisible aid, what could even a prodigious effort have accomplished under such circumstances?) but as he held on his way, and mounted higher and higher, even into the skies, the task became less difficult; and though new heights, not anticipated, remained to be climbed, yet he found a heart to climb them cheerfully and hopefully. At length he reached the summit, and a vision, glorious beyond description, burst upon his view. A multitude of the heavenly host were there, scattered over the plain, and crowded upon gentle hills that overlooked the scene; their eyes were all on him; and they all burst forth with songs of deliverance on his account; while a being glorious enough to be the Lord of all this enraptured host, came to him who had there arrived, and received him, as he fainted through the force of unspeakable emotions, and bore him away not altogether insensible, for the songs of the jubilant host still sounded in his ears.

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