Evening, September 7

Charles Spurgeon · Morning and Evening: Daily Readings

"There is sorrow on the sea; it cannot be quiet."

  Jeremiah 49:23

   Little know we what sorrow may be upon the sea at this moment. We are
   safe in our quiet chamber, but far away on the salt sea the hurricane
   may be cruelly seeking for the lives of men. Hear how the death fiends
   howl among the cordage; how every timber starts as the waves beat like
   battering rams upon the vessel! God help you, poor drenched and wearied
   ones! My prayer goes up to the great Lord of sea and land, that he will
   make the storm a calm, and bring you to your desired haven! Nor ought I
   to offer prayer alone, I should try to benefit those hardy men who risk
   their lives so constantly. Have I ever done anything for them? What can
   I do? How often does the boisterous sea swallow up the mariner!
   Thousands of corpses lie where pearls lie deep. There is death-sorrow
   on the sea, which is echoed in the long wail of widows and orphans. The
   salt of the sea is in many eyes of mothers and wives. Remorseless
   billows, ye have devoured the love of women, and the stay of
   households. What a resurrection shall there be from the caverns of the
   deep when the sea gives up her dead! Till then there will be sorrow on
   the sea. As if in sympathy with the woes of earth, the sea is forever
   fretting along a thousand shores, wailing with a sorrowful cry like her
   own birds, booming with a hollow crash of unrest, raving with
   uproarious discontent, chafing with hoarse wrath, or jangling with the
   voices of ten thousand murmuring pebbles. The roar of the sea may be
   joyous to a rejoicing spirit, but to the son of sorrow the wide, wide
   ocean is even more forlorn than the wide, wide world. This is not our
   rest, and the restless billows tell us so. There is a land where there
   is no more sea--our faces are steadfastly set towards it; we are going
   to the place of which the Lord hath spoken. Till then, we cast our
   sorrows on the Lord who trod the sea of old, and who maketh a way for
   his people through the depths thereof.