Daily Devotionals

Music For the Soul

Devotional: February 3rd

CHRIST THE FOSTERER OF INCIPIENT AND IMPERFECT GOOD

The smoking flax (the dimly-burning wick) shall He not quench. - Isaiah 42:3

In all men, just because the process of evil and the wounds from it are not so deep and complete as that restoration is impossible, therefore is there something in their nature which corresponds to this dim flame that needs to be fostered in order to blaze brightly abroad. There is no man out of hell but has in him something that wants but to be brought to sovereign power in his life in order to make him a light in the world. You have got consciences at the least; you have convictions, you know you have, which, if you followed them out, would make Christians of you straight away. You have got aspirations after good, desires after purity and nobleness of living, which only need to be raised to the height and the dominance in your lives which they ought to possess in order to revolutionize your whole course. There is a spark in every man which, fanned and cared for, will change him from darkness into light. Fanned and cared for it needs to be, and fanned and cared for it can only be by a Divine power coming down upon it from without. He from whom all sparks of light have died out is not a man, but a devil. And for all of us the exhortation comes: "Thou hast a law within testifying to God and to duty "; listen to it and care for it. In a narrower way, the words may be applied to a class. There are some of us who have in us a little spark, as we believe, of a Divine life, the faint beginnings of a Christian character. We call ourselves Christ’s disciples. We are, but oh! how dimly the flax burns! They say that where there is smoke there is fire. There is a deal more smoke than fire in the most of Christian people in this generation. And if it were not for such thoughts as this, about that dear Christ that will not lay a hasty hand upon some little tremulous spark, and by one rash movement extinguish it for ever, there would be but little hope for a great many of us.

How do you make ’’smoking flax" burn? You give it oil, you give it air, and you take away the charred portions. And Christ will give you, in your feebleness, the oil of His Spirit, that you may burn brightly as one of the candlesticks in His temple; and He will let air in, and take away the charred portions by the wise discipline of sorrow and trial sometimes in order that the smoking flax may become the shining light. But by whatsoever means it may be, be sure of this, that He will neither despise nor neglect the feeblest inclination of good after Him, but will nourish it to perfection and to beauty.

The reason why so many Christian men’s Christian light is so fuliginous and dim is just that they keep away from Jesus Christ. "Abide in Me and I in you." "As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more can ye except ye abide in Me." How can the Temple lamps burn bright unless the Priest of the Temple tends them? Keep near Him, that His hand may nourish your smoking dimness into a pure flame, leaping heavenward and illuminating your lives.