Evening, March 10
Charles Spurgeon · Morning and Evening: Daily Readings
Job 14:1
"Man ... is of few days, and full of trouble."
Job 14:1
It may be of great service to us, before we fall asleep, to remember
this mournful fact, for it may lead us to set loose by earthly things.
There is nothing very pleasant in the recollection that we are not
above the shafts of adversity, but it may humble us and prevent our
boasting like the Psalmist in our morning's portion. "My mountain
standeth firm: I shall never be moved." It may stay us from taking too
deep root in this soil from which we are so soon to be transplanted
into the heavenly garden. Let us recollect the frail tenure upon which
we hold our temporal mercies. If we would remember that all the trees
of earth are marked for the woodman's axe, we should not be so ready to
build our nests in them. We should love, but we should love with the
love which expects death, and which reckons upon separations. Our dear
relations are but loaned to us, and the hour when we must return them
to the lender's hand may be even at the door. The like is certainly
true of our worldly goods. Do not riches take to themselves wings and
fly away? Our health is equally precarious. Frail flowers of the field,
we must not reckon upon blooming forever. There is a time appointed for
weakness and sickness, when we shall have to glorify God by suffering,
and not by earnest activity. There is no single point in which we can
hope to escape from the sharp arrows of affliction; out of our few days
there is not one secure from sorrow. Man's life is a cask full of
bitter wine; he who looks for joy in it had better seek for honey in an
ocean of brine. Beloved reader, set not your affections upon things of
earth: but seek those things which are above, for here the moth
devoureth, and the thief breaketh through, but there all joys are
perpetual and eternal. The path of trouble is the way home. Lord, make
this thought a pillow for many a weary head!