Daily Devotional
October 11
Streams in the Desert
"As dying and behold we live.** (2 Cor. 6:9.) HAD a bed of asters last summer, that reached clear across my garden in the country. Oh, how gaily they bloomed. They were planted late. On the sides were yet fresh blossoming flowers, while the tops had gone to seed. Early frosts came, and I found one day that that long line of radiant beauty was seared, and I said,"Ah! the season is too much for them; they have per¬ ished"; and I bade them farewell.
I disliked to go and look at the bed, it looked so like a grave¬ yard of flowers. But, four or five weeks ago one of my men called my attention to the fact that along the whole line of that bed there were asters coming up in the greatest abundance; and I looked, and behold, for every plant that I thought the winter had destroyed there were fifty plants that it had planted.
What did those frosts and surly winds do? They caught my flowers, they slew them, they cast them to the ground, they trod with snowy feet upon them, and they said, leaving their work,"This is the end of you."And the next spring there were for every root, fifty witnesses to rise up and say,"By death we live."
And as it is in the floral tribe, so it is in God's kingdom. By death came everlasting life. By crucifixion and the sepulchre came the throne and the palace of the Eternal God. By over¬ throw came victory.
Do not be afraid to suffer. Do not be afraid to be over¬ thrown. It is by being cast down and not destroyed; it is by being shaken to pieces, and the pieces tom to shreds, that men be¬ come men of might, and that one a host; whereas men that yield to the appearance of things, and go with the world, have their quick blossoming, their momentary prosperity and then their end, which is an end forever.— Beecher,'Measure thy life by loss and not by gain,.
Not by the wine drunk, but by the wine poured forth. I For love's strength standeth in love's sacrifices And he who suffers most has most to^giv^'V October 12 T u And Joseph's master took him, and put him into a prison •.. But Jehovah was with Joseph,,. and that which he did, Jehovah made it to prosper, (Gen. 39:20-23)
HEN God lets us go to prison because we have been serving Him, and goes there with us, prison is about the most blessed place in the world that we could be in. Joseph seems to have known that. He did not sulk and grow discouraged and rebellious because"every¬ thing was against him."If he had, the prison-keeper would never have trusted him so. Joseph does not even seem to have pitied himself.
Let us remember that if self-pity is allowed to set in, that is the end of us—until it is cast utterly from us. Joseph just turned over everything in joyous trust to God, and so the keeper of the prison turned over everything to Joseph. Lord Jesus, when the prison doors close in on me, keep me trusting, and keep my joy full and abounding. Prosper Thy work through me in prison: even there, make me free indeed.— Selected, A little bird I am, Shut from the fields of air, And in my cage 1 sit and sing To Him who placed me there;
Well pleased a prisoner to be. Because, my God, it pleaseth Thee. My cage confines me round, Abroad 1 cannot fly. But though my wing is closely bound. My soul is at liberty;
For prison walls cannot control The flight, the freedom of the soul. I have learnt to love the darkness of sorrow; there you see the brightness of His face.— Madame Guyon.