Monday, November 24, 2008

Communion with God



We do not muse much in these days of ours. We are too busy. We are hurrying here and there, doing much, and talking much, but thinking very little, and spending but very little time indeed in the modesty of retirement.

“The calm retreat, the silent shade,”

are things which we know but very little about. We should be better men, if we were more alone; and I think that we should do more good after all, if with even less of active effort we spent more time in waiting upon God, and gathering spiritual strength for labor in his service. Where lives there upon earth, in these days, a man who spends hour after hour of the day in meditation upon God? There may be such, and if there be, I would that I had their acquaintance; but where will you find giants such as those who lived in the Puritan times, whose lips dropped pearls, because they themselves had dived down deep in the fathomless ocean of mercy by the sweet aid of meditation? There may be such, and I would that it were our lot to sit under their ministry; but I fear that the most of us are so little in retirement -so seldom in communion with God in private, and even when there, the communion is for so short a time - that we are but tiny dwarfs, and can never, while we live thus, attain to the stature of a perfect man in Christ Jesus. The world has put a little letter before the word “musing,” and these are the days, not for musing, but for a-musing. People will go anywhere for amusement; but to muse is a strange thing to them, and they think it dull and wearisome.

From a sermon entitled "Quiet Musing," delivered. Flickr photo by Indy Kethdy; some rights reserved.

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