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Daily Devotionals
Music For the Soul
Devotional: December 28th

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REMEMBER AND REPENT

Remember, therefore, front whence thou art fallen and repent and do the first works. - Revelation 2:5

We look back upon a past, of which God gave us the warp, and we had to put in the woof. The warp is all bright and pure. The threads that have crossed it from our shuttles are many of them very dark, and all of them stained in some part. So let us take the year that has gone, and spread them out by the agency of this servant of the court, Memory, before the supreme judge. Conscience.

Let us remember, that we may be warned and directed. We shall understand the true moral character of our actions a great deal better when we look back upon them calmly, and when all the rush of temptation and the seducing whispers of our own weak wills are silenced. There is nothing more terrible, in one aspect, there is nothing more salutary and blessed in another, than the difference between the front view and the back of any temptation to which we yield - all radiant and beautiful on the hither side, and when we get past it and look back at it, all hideous. Like some of those painted canvases upon the theater stage: seen from the pit, with the delusive brilliancy of the footlights thrown upon them, they look beautiful works of art; seen at the back, dirty and cobwebbed canvas, all splashes and spots and uglinesses. Let us be thankful if memory can show us the reverse side of the temptations that on the near side were so seductive.

It is when you see a sketch of your life that you understand the significance of the single deeds in them. We are so apt to isolate our actions that we are startled, and it is a wholesome shock when we see how, without knowing it, we have dropped into a habit. When each temptation comes, as the moments are passing, we say, "Oh, just this once! Just this once!" And the acts that we thought isolated we find out to our horror - our wholesome horror - have become a chain that binds and holds us. Look back over the year, and drag its events to the bar of Conscience, and I shall be surprised if you do not find out that you have fallen into wrong habits that you never dreamed had dominion over you. So I say, Remember and repent.

I do not want to exaggerate, I do not want to urge upon you one-sided views of your character or conduct. I give all credit to many excellences, many acts of sacrifice, many acts of service; and yet I say that the main reason why any of us have a good opinion of ourselves is because we have no knowledge of ourselves; and that the safest attitude for all of us, in looking back over what we have made of life, is, hands on mouths, and mouths in dust, and the cry coming from them, " Unclean! unclean! "

A little mud in a stream may not be perceptible when you take a wine glassful of it and look at it, but if you take a riverful or a lakeful you will soon see the taint.

The best use the memory can serve for us is that the remembrance should drive us closer to Jesus Christ, and make us cling more closely to Him. That past can be canceled, these multitudinous sins can be forgiven. Memory should be one of the strongest strands in the cord that binds our helplessness to the all-forgiving and all-cleansing Christ.

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