Daily Devotionals

Music For the Soul

Devotional: November 15th

’’NOW IS THE ACCEPTED TIME"

Remember also thy Creator in the days of thy youth, or ever the evil days come, and the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them. - Ecclesiastes 12:1

Would it not have been a very sensible thing of the Israelites on Carmel if, after they saw the miracle of the fire falling from heaven, they had said to the prophet, "We will hear thee again on this matter?" They were wiser. Conviction followed immediately. Resolution and action came close on the heels of conviction. "All the people fell on their faces and said, The Lord! He is God. The Lord! He is God." That is a wise course always. Tomorrow is the fool’s plea, by which he cheats himself, but cheats neither this inexorable universe nor the God that made it. Many a man dies a drunkard who for half a lifetime has been saying, "Tomorrow I will begin to reform." And when the last of the tomorrows has sunk into yesterday, it leaves him as it found him. Procrastination in doing right is continuance in doing wrong. We live in too uncertain and too strenuous a world to allow any grass to grow under our feet in putting into exercise our deliberate decisions. That is true all round, but most eminently in regard of our submission to Jesus Christ.

Consider how much youth needs the guidance and the grace of Jesus Christ. Your experience is little, your hopes are bright, your passions are strong, your temptations are many. Everything is fresh and radiant round you. With the unreflectiveness and the buoyant hopefulness which are your beautiful privileges, and are so soon knocked out of us, you are eager to cast yourself into the fray. You sometimes think that religion is very good for old people like me, but not necessary for you. "Wilt thou not from this time say, My Father, Thou art the Guide of my youth "? That will keep you from many a sore heart and from many a sad hour.

Consider how favourable youth is to decision. We older men are like flies in a spider’s web, with a hundred filaments, poisonous and dirty, spun round us, and making movement difficult. You have but little of that yet. You are not yet "tied and bound by the cords of your sins." You have not many deep-rooted evil habits to break. There are not many black pages on your diary which you would fain erase, and which make you feel that the tragedy of life is "What I have written I have written." This is your time to plant. Your lives are before you, your characters as yet are plastic. The lava is molten; it is hardening very fast. Do you not put off this deliberate decision about which I am speaking till it is hardened into rock.

Consider how much you gain by youthful decision for Jesus Christ. So much the longer blessedness, so many more hours of peaceful growth; no cleft in your lives between a past that your cheek burns to think about, and a poor present in which you try to redeem it, the mystic influence of habit on the side of godliness. Oh, it is beautiful! when we have "first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear." And the men that have done most work for God and man in the world are, in nine cases out of ten, the men who in their early days were kept innocent and ignorant of much transgression because they were the servants of the Lord from their youth.