Category: Devotion of the Day

Drab Day

Lo, I am with you always [all the days], even unto the end of the world.
Matthew 28:20

“All the days,” any day, every day, all kinds of days, His grace is sufficient. And no days prove Him more than the dull, dry, tedious days when time hangs heavy on our hands, when nothing seems to happen, when the hands of the clock seem stuck, so slowly move the hours.

I write today in a drab small-town railroad depot where I must wait six hours for a train. Too cold to walk outside, nothing to see, nothing to do. Nothing to do? There is always an opportunity of some sort to buy up in these days so evil. There is a Bible to read, a Heavenly Father to whom we may pray. A good book to read – in this case Marcus Rainsford’s Our Lord Prays For His Own. An old man came in and I had a word with him about the Lord. Now I’m writing this bit. There is time to meditate. A humdrum day may be no less a holy day and a happy day. He is with us all the days – including this one! And this is he day which the Lord hath made.

I am steward of my days, and it is required of a steward tat he be found faithful. This is the only day of its kind. It will never come again. And as in any other day, there are hours to prove His presence and enjoy His sufficient grace.

The Supreme Experience

My grace is sufficient for thee.
II Corinthians 12:9

Within a few verses Paul goes from height to depth and rises again to greater height than ever. His third heaven experience, his thorn in the flesh, his denied request, should settle once for all what is the supreme matter in this earthly sojourn. We like to play up third heavens, mighty deliverances, amazing answers to prayer. The supreme experience of Paul was none of these but a constant dependence on God’s sufficient grace. That does not sound spectacular, sensational; it does not make as good a story as third heavens and startling deliverances, but God rates it higher. After all, in the strength of it Paul outtraveled, outpreached, outwrote, and, in general, outperformed any man of his day.

It is better to be buffeted by Satan’s messenger than to be exalted above measure by a third heaven experience. Better have something you can tell than hear words you cannot utter! Life’s greatest experience is to live in the strength of Another the Exchanged Life – “Christ liveth in me.” It is better for heaven thus to come to earth than for you temporarily to be caught up to heaven.