Category: Devotion of the Day

NEARING HOME

The time of my departure is at hand.
II Timothy 4:6

How often have I noticed when headed home from my travels a relief and release, a lessening of strain and tension. Nothing bothers me, I feel great, I am going home!

Should it not be so with us Christian pilgrims who seek a country? Why should earth’s cares pester us? We are on our way home, and nothing can stop us. Death itself but speeds the arrival and is a paying proposition, for “to depart and be with Christ is far better.” “To die is gain.”

“One sweetly solemn thought” daily reminds us that we are nearer home than we’ve ever been before. Let time and earth do their worst, they but quicken our heavenward pace! There is nothing to fear. No combination of men or devils can keep us from getting home. Why should I not be hilarious with a song in my heart? I shall soon be beyond all that spoils my peace and joy. My Lord is over there, and more and more of those I love gather on that side. Nothing can hinder me from arriving. I feel like traveling on!

It is great to be nearing home!

PURPOSEFUL PRUNING

Every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.
John 15:2

“Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.” The beloved child is chastised and the fruitful branch is pruned. Many a troubled soul in an hour of distress has fancied itself the object of God’s displeasure. But it is the fruitful branch that feels the knife. The unfruitful branch is taken away and burned. Many a saint in adversity has feared that he is perhaps a stranger to grace, forgetting that it is the bastards, not sons, who escape the Father’s discipline.

There is a purpose in the pruning, “that it may bring forth more fruit.” Not the feverish stepped-up production of this machine age but the natural, spontaneous fruitfulness of the branch that draws its life from the vine. Too much of our religious productivity is ground out by the methods of this age. The true Christian abides and abounds, and to him the Father-Husbandman’s pruning is part of he process.