Morning, April 29

Charles Spurgeon · Morning and Evening: Daily Readings

"Thou art my hope in the day of evil."

  Jeremiah 17:17

   The path of the Christian is not always bright with sunshine; he has
   his seasons of darkness and of storm. True, it is written in God's
   Word, "Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace;"
   and it is a great truth, that religion is calculated to give a man
   happiness below as well as bliss above; but experience tells us that if
   the course of the just be "As the shining light that shineth more and
   more unto the perfect day," yet sometimes that light is eclipsed. At
   certain periods clouds cover the believer's sun, and he walks in
   darkness and sees no light. There are many who have rejoiced in the
   presence of God for a season; they have basked in the sunshine in the
   earlier stages of their Christian career; they have walked along the
   "green pastures" by the side of the "still waters," but suddenly they
   find the glorious sky is clouded; instead of the Land of Goshen they
   have to tread the sandy desert; in the place of sweet waters, they find
   troubled streams, bitter to their taste, and they say, "Surely, if I
   were a child of God, this would not happen." Oh! say not so, thou who
   art walking in darkness. The best of God's saints must drink the
   wormwood; the dearest of his children must bear the cross. No Christian
   has enjoyed perpetual prosperity; no believer can always keep his harp
   from the willows. Perhaps the Lord allotted you at first a smooth and
   unclouded path, because you were weak and timid. He tempered the wind
   to the shorn lamb, but now that you are stronger in the spiritual life,
   you must enter upon the riper and rougher experience of God's
   full-grown children. We need winds and tempests to exercise our faith,
   to tear off the rotten bough of self-dependence, and to root us more
   firmly in Christ. The day of evil reveals to us the value of our
   glorious hope.