The right side is the bright side ultimately but not always immediately. We are not called to be pulpit Pollyannas wearing rose-colored glasses and painting the clouds with sunshine. Paul’s contemporaries may have explained his dark picture of the last days by saying, “He is just a bilious old bachelor in a Roman jail, and everything looks yellow to a jaundiced eye.” Someone may have reminded him that one can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, but Paul was not in the fly-catching business, anyway.
Devotion of the Day
PLEASURES…SEASONAL AND PERENNIAL
The pleasures of sin for a season.
Hebrews 11:25
At they right hand there are pleasures forevermore.
Psalm 16:17
Moses chose the imperishable. He had his eye on Him who is invisible. No wonder that he did the impossible! Sin’s pleasures are only for a season. “She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth.” “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.”
God’s pleasures are perennial. This poor age loves the temporal. It lives from one passing fancy to another. Today’s hit if forgotten tomorrow. Everything is for a season. Its shows, its styles, bear the label “this season.” The man who lives in God is never out of season. “The fashion of this world passeth away,” but he is not of this world.
Do you have the “joy that remains”?