Category: Devotion of the Day

The Fair King and the Far Country

Thine eyes shall see the king in his beauty: they shall behold the land that is very far off.
Isaiah 33:17

The vision of the King is followed by the View of The Land of Far Distances. After the Vision, the Vista. First, there is the Christian life itself opening up in all its limitless outreaches. We need not stand on Jordan’s stormy banks casting a wishful eye to Canaan’s fair and happy land, where our possessions lie. Canaan for the Christian is not heaven beyond but the heavenlies now, and he may follow his Joshua (“Jesus” is the same name) across Jordan and possess his possessions. The life that is hid with Christ in God is boundless in its possibilities, even in its earthly chapter now before the believer gets to glory.

Alas, too many of us are slack to possess the Promised Land. Like the Israelites in Canaan, we settle down in a little portion of it and compromise with what we should conquer. The average Christian needs to see the Far Country of a life of Spiritual victory wherein we reign now as well as after death. Blessed is he who having seen the King sees also what he himself may be now, as well as what he may become hereafter!

It is well to read in Revelation of what lies in the millennium ahead. It is also glorious to see in Ephesians the far country visible from the milestones today.

When the Task Seems Insignificant

Go ye into the village over against you: in the which at your entering ye shall find a colt tied, whereon yet never man sat: lose him, and bring him hither.
Luke 19:30

These disciples, after three years of training for greater tasks, might have felt that going after a donkey was a rather unimportant errand. But there are no trivial assignments in the work of the Lord. That colt was part of t Divine plan from the foundation of the world. The Lord of creation called it into His service just as He called to His service the fish with the tax money in its mouth and the rooster at Peter’s denial.

If you are commissioned to go “borrow a colt” for the Lord do not think your chore has no significance. Bring the colt to Him and He will fit it into His arrangements. The simplest detail is charged with meaning if it be part of His will. This humble little colt was a fulfillment of prophecy made centuries before, and the smallest link in the chain of God’s great purpose is worth your service.

They were to tell the owner of the colt, “The Lord hath need of him.” Finding a few loaves and fishes for Him to bless and multiply, a fish with a coin to pay His taxes, a donkey for Him to ride – nothing is too lowly if the Lord needs it.