Morning, July 3
Charles Spurgeon · Morning and Evening: Daily Readings
Genesis 41:4
"The ill favoured and leanfleshed kine did eat up the seven
wellfavoured and fat kine."
Genesis 41:4
Pharaoh's dream has too often been my waking experience. My days of
sloth have ruinously destroyed all that I had achieved in times of
zealous industry; my seasons of coldness have frozen all the genial
glow of my periods of fervency and enthusiasm; and my fits of
worldliness have thrown me back from my advances in the divine life. I
had need to beware of lean prayers, lean praises, lean duties, and lean
experiences, for these will eat up the fat of my comfort and peace. If
I neglect prayer for never so short a time, I lose all the spirituality
to which I had attained; if I draw no fresh supplies from heaven, the
old corn in my granary is soon consumed by the famine which rages in my
soul. When the caterpillars of indifference, the cankerworms of
worldliness, and the palmerworms of self-indulgence, lay my heart
completely desolate, and make my soul to languish, all my former
fruitfulness and growth in grace avails me nothing whatever. How
anxious should I be to have no lean-fleshed days, no ill-favoured
hours! If every day I journeyed towards the goal of my desires I should
soon reach it, but backsliding leaves me still far off from the prize
of my high calling, and robs me of the advances which I had so
laboriously made. The only way in which all my days can be as the "fat
kine," is to feed them in the right meadow, to spend them with the
Lord, in His service, in His company, in His fear, and in His way. Why
should not every year be richer than the past, in love, and usefulness,
and joy?--I am nearer the celestial hills, I have had more experience
of my Lord, and should be more like Him. O Lord, keep far from me the
curse of leanness of soul; let me not have to cry, "My leanness, my
leanness, woe unto me!" but may I be well-fed and nourished in thy
house, that I may praise thy name.