Daily Devotions February 8th

Faith’s Check Book

 

 JOYFUL SECURITY

 

 

"I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness" Isaiah 41:10

 

Fear of falling is wholesome. To be venturesome is no sign of wisdom. Times come to us when we feel that we must go down unless we have a very special support. Here we have it. God’s right hand is a grand thing to lean upon. Mind, it is not only His hand, though it keepeth Heaven and earth in their places, but His right hand: His power united with skill, His power where it is most dexterous. Nay, this is not all, it is written, "I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness." That hand which He uses to maintain His holiness, and to execute His royal sentences — this shall be stretched out to hold up His trusting ones. Fearful is our danger, but joyful is our security. The man whom God upholds, devils cannot throw down.

 

Weak may be our feet, but almighty is God’s right hand. Rough may be the road, but Omnipotence is our upholding. We may boldly go forward. We shall not fall. Let us lean continually where all things lean. God will not withdraw His strength, for His righteousness is there as well: He will be faithful to His promise, and faithful to His Son, and therefore faithful to us. How happy we ought to be! Are we not so?

 

 

Thought’s for the Quiet Hour

Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house.… Abraham … was gathered to his people

Gen 12:1; Gen. 25:8

After all communion we dwell as upon islands, dotted over a great archipelago, each upon his little rock with the sea dashing between us; but the time comes when, if our hearts are set upon that great Lord whose presence makes us one, there shall be no more sea and all the isolated rocks shall be parts of a great continent.… If we cultivate that sense of detachment from the present and of having our true affinities in the unseen, if we dwell here as strangers because our citizenship is in heaven, then death will not drag us away from our associates nor hunt us into a lonely land, but will bring us where closer bonds shall knit the “sweet societies” together, and the sheep shall couch close by one another because all gathered round the one Shepherd. Then many a tie shall be re-woven, and the solitary wanderer meet again the dear ones whom he had “loved long since and lost awhile.”

Alexander Maclaren