Daily Devotionals

Music For the Soul

Devotional: November 17th

TRAGIC UNCONSCIOUSNESS

He wist not that the Lord was departed from him. - Judges 16:20

Samson, fresh from his coarse debauch, and shorn of the locks which he had vowed to keep, strides out into the air, and tries his former feats. But his strength has left him because the Lord has left him; and the Lord has left him because, in his fleshly animalism, he has left the Lord. The strong man made weak is unconscious of his weakness. All evil, by its very nature, tends to make us insensitive to its presence. Conscience becomes dull by practice of sin and by neglect of conscience, until that which at first was as sensitive as the palm of a little child’s hand becomes as if it were "seared with a hot iron." The foulness of the atmosphere of a crowded hall is not perceived by the people in it. It needs a man to come in from the outer air to detect it. We can accustom ourselves to any mephitic and poisonous atmosphere, and many of us live in one all our days, and do not know that there is any need of ventilation or that the air is not perfectly sweet. The deceitfulness of sin is its great weapon. Christian people may lose their strength because they let go their hold upon God, and know nothing about it. Spiritual declension, all unconscious of its own existence, is the very history of hundreds of nominal Christians. When the life-blood is pouring out of a man, he faints before he dies. The swoon of unconsciousness is the condition of some professing Christians. Frost-bitten limbs are quite comfortable, and only tingle when circulation is coming back. I remember a great elm tree, the pride of an avenue in the south, that had spread its branches for more years than the oldest man could count, and stood, leafy and green. Not until a winter storm came one night and laid it low with a crash did anybody suspect what everybody saw in the morning - that the heart was eaten out of it, and nothing left but a shell of bark. Some Christian people are like that: they manage leaves, and even some fruit; but when the storm comes, they will go down, because the heart has been out of their religion for years. And so, because there are so many things that mask the ebbing away of a Christian life, and because our own self-love and habits come in to hide declension, let us watch ourselves very narrowly. Unconsciousness does not mean ignorant presumption or presumptuous ignorance. It is difficult to make an estimate of ourselves by poking into our own sentiments and supposed feelings and convictions, and the estimate is likely to be wrong. There is a better way than that. Two things tell what a man is - one, what he wants, and the other, what he does. As the will is, the man is. Where do the currents of your desires set? If you watch their flow, you may be pretty sure whether your religious life is an ebbing or a rising tide. The other way to ascertain what we are is rigidly to examine and judge what we do. " Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord." Actions are the true test of a man. Conduct is the best illumination of character, especially in regard to ourselves. So watch, and be sober - sober in our estimate of ourselves, and determined to find every lurking evil, and to drag it forth into the light.