Psalm 139:18 If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with you. : — To an earnestly devout mind there is no hour in She day to compare with the morning hour. "Evening calms the mind" when the heat and the tumult of the day are past. Not without good reason did that ancient figure meditate "in the fields at eventide." But the morning hour largely determines what he shall meditate upon as he walks those grassy slopes. Let me show you how, by a godly man, that morning hour may be used to do at least something towards flinging into the day a light sweeter and pleasanter than its own. I. IT MAY BE SO USED AS TO IMPART, IN SOME SORT AT LEAST, A SPIRITUAL TONE TO THE ENTIRE DAY. Busy men are wont to complain, "In crowded street and busy mart the mind cannot get itself fixed on higher things." Much, however, can be done, and in this way. When that light — so sweet, so pleasant for the eyes to behold — looks in upon us, and the tasks and duties of the day begin to marshal themselves before us, let the mind be imbued with the Christian temper — let it be pitched, so to speak, in a Christian key; and though God through the day may not be "in all our thoughts," He will not be far from every one of them. II. A DAY BEGUN IN THIS FASHION ACQUIRES A CERTAIN PRACTICAL STEADINESS. You have noticed, I am sure, how a day entered upon without thought, without prayer, has invariably turned out a very confused and unsatisfactory thing. There are more battles to fight than those which are won and lost on fields of blood; and the bravest, steadiest soldiers are not the men who have leaped from their beds and rushed into action. They are the men whose heads have been cleared and cooled, and whose mental and spiritual nerves have been braced by meditation and prayer. III. THIS KIND OF PRAYERFUL FORETHOUGHT GIVES A CERTAIN DESIRABLE SPECIALITY TO THE DAY. We cannot, it is true, make every day a feast-day, but we can redeem our days from a spiritless sameness. Is my work monotonous? (and whose work is always teeming with freshness of interest?) let me redeem it from being anything like drudgery by baking it up every day as a new trust. Is it uncongenial? (and whose work is always to his taste?) let me place it day by day on the highest grounds. Oh, how often would many of us turn from the incumbent disagreeable, if we did not carry it to a loftier tribunal than any our personal feelings can furnish. (J. Thew.) Parallel Verses KJV: If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee.WEB: If I would count them, they are more in number than the sand. When I wake up, I am still with you. |
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