Lectionary Calendar
Thursday, March 28th, 2024
Maundy Thursday
There are 3 days til Easter!
Attention!
Partner with StudyLight.org as God uses us to make a difference for those displaced by Russia's war on Ukraine.
Click to donate today!

Daily Devotionals
Music For the Soul
Devotional: July 27th

Resource Toolbox

LIFTED TO THE HIGH LEVEL

They go from strength to strength; every one of them appeareth before God in Zion. - Psalms 84:7

The phrase means, of course, the continuous bestowal in unintermitting sequence of fresh gifts of power, as each former gift becomes exhausted, and more is required. Instant by instant, with unbroken flow, as golden shafts of light travel from the central sun, and each beam is linked with the source from which it comes by a line that stretches through millions and millions of miles, so God’s gift of strength pours into us as we need. Grace abhors a vacuum, as nature does. And just as the endless procession of the waves rises up on to the beach, or as the restless network of the moonlight irradiation of the billows stretches all across the darkness of the sea, so that unbroken continuity of strength after strength gives grace for grace according to our need; and as each former supply is expended and used up, God pours Himself into our hearts anew. That continuous communication leads to the "perpetual youth" of the Christian soul. For the words of Isaiah, "They shall mount up with wings as eagles," might perhaps more accurately be rendered, " They shall put forth their pinions as eagles" - the allusion being to the popular belief that in extreme old age the eagle moulted and renewed its feathers - that popular belief which is referred to in Psalms 103:5, " Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things, so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s."

The same idea is here that though, according to the law of physical life, decaying strength, and advancing years, that tame and sober and disenchant and often make weary because they are familiar with all things and take the edge off everything, - though these tell upon us whether we are Christians or not, and in some important respects tell upon us all alike, yet, if we are "waiting upon God," keeping our hearts near Him, living on His love, trying to realise His inward presence and His outstretched hand, then we shall have such a continuous communication of His grace, strength, and beauty as that we shall grow younger as we grow older, and, as the good old Scotch psalm has it,

" In old age, when others fade,

They fruit still forth shall bring."

"The oldest angels are the youngest," said Swedenborg. "They that wait upon ’the Lord’ have drunk of the fountain of perpetual youth, for the buoyancy and the inextinguishable hope which are the richest possessions of youth may abide with them whose hopes are set on things beyond the sky."

Subscribe …
Get the latest devotional delivered straight to your inbox every week by signing up for the "Music For the Soul" subscription list. Simply provide your email address below, click on "Subscribe!", and you'll receive a confirmation email from us. Follow the instructions in the email to confirm your subscription to this list.
adsfree-icon
Ads FreeProfile