the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Music For the Soul
THE CHRISTIAN AIM ULTIMATELY REALIZED
He led them also by a straight way, that they might go to a city of habitation. - Psalms 107:7
The man that has one definite purpose in view is the strong man. Such distinction of aim gives what most of our lives so sadly lack - continuity right through them. There is only one aim so great and so far that we never can reach it, and never outgrow it. And is not that a blessing? Look back on your lives. Have they not been like the course of a ship with a head-wind, tacking first in one direction and then in another? Have they not been like the navigation of the ancients, who could not push out to sea for fear of losing their landmarks; and so had first to make for one headland and then for another, and to leave them one by one behind them as they sailed on their devious course? We too often live fragmentary lives. But if we have far before us, beyond the furthest reach of thought, apprehension, or attainment, the one great aim to be with God, to be in God, to be like God, to be flooded with God, why, then, we can never need to substitute another purpose for that, or say, "It has served its turn, and we can leave it behind." So the whole life may be of a piece, strong, solid, continuously progressive and increasing; and everything that we do may be brought into harmony with and subjection to this aim. There is only one purpose that lasts a lifetime, there is only one that can be followed, amidst all the variety of occupations which so often break up our lives into fragments. " This one thing I do," is the secret of all blessedness.
No man honestly wants God and does not get Him. No man has less of goodness and Christ-likeness than he truly desires and earnestly seeks. We all experience many failures in regard to the nearer aims of our lives. Thank God for failures, for disappointments, for hopes unfulfilled, and even for those which, when accomplished, turn out not to be worth fulfilling. Thank God for all the times in which He has made the harvest from our servings a very poor one, so that we have sown much and brought home little! It is His way of teaching us to turn away from the paths in which effort has no assurance of success, into the paths in which it cannot fail. "I have never said to any of the seed of Israel, Seek ye My face in vain." (Isaiah 45:19) We may not reach other lands which to us seem to be lands of promise; or when we get there we may find that the land is "evil and naughty." But this land we shall reach if we desire it, and if, desiring it, we go forth from the vain world. Canaan is the symbol of the rest that remains for the people of God. No pilgrim with his face set Zionward ever perished in the wilderness or lost his road. "They go from strength to strength; every one of them in Zion appeareth before God." And when they get there, nothing will be thought by them about the sandy deserts, the salt wastes, and the waterless wildernesses; nothing about the weariness and the solitude and the dangers and the toils. This, and this alone, will be worth recording as the summing up of the lives of the happy pilgrims who have accomplished all at which they aimed, that they are at rest for ever in the mother-country which they sought.
'Music For The Soul' daily readings for a year from the writings of the Rev. Alexander Maclaren, D.D., selected and arranged by the Rev. Geo. Coates, published by A.C. Armstrong and Son, 51 East Tenth Street, (1897). The original text is in the Public Domain and this electronic version is free for anyone without cost or obligation. This a year long daily devotional was written by the Rev. Alexander Maclaren over 100 years ago. This Scottish pastor had a heart to follow Jesus and a love for souls.
