Shall I ever distrust you, ever disbelieve you, ever wound you, ever leave you more?
Posted : 29 Dec, 2011 02:24 AM
"For you are my lamp, O LORD, and my God lightens my darkness" (2 Sam. 22:29).
Devotional
Blessed Lord! You are my Light. Accepted in your righteousness, I am clothed with the sun. Dark in myself, I am light in you. How often you have turned my gloomy night into sunny day!
Yes, Lord, and with a love no less tender, you have sometimes turned my joy into weeping. Yet you have made my very griefs to sing. You have fringed many a dark cloud of my pilgrimage with your golden beams. In your light have I seen light upon many of your gloomy and mysterious dispensations, O my covenant God. By your light I have walked through darkness on many a long and lonely stage of my journey. And yet, oh, how you have gone before me each step that you bid me to travel.
You, too, passed through your night of solitude, suffering, and woe. But you were deprived of the relief which you so graciously and tenderly warrant to me. Not a beam illumined the midnight of your soul. God hid the light of his manifested Fatherhood from your view. And in bitter agony you exclaimed, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" And you willingly endured all this so that I might have a song in the night of my grief. Thus your darkness becomes my light, your suffering my joy, your humiliation my glory, your death my life, your curse my crown.
O Lord! That is a blessed night of weeping in which I can sing of your sustaining grace, of your enlivening presence, of your unfaltering faithfulness, of your tender love. How well have you instructed me in your school! How patiently and skillfully you have taught me!
I could not have done without your teaching and your discipline. I could not safely have dispensed with one night of suffering. I could not safely have done without one chastising stroke. I could not safely have forgone one ingredient in my cup of sorrow. All was necessary.
And now, as faith looks back and surveys all the past, I can see with what infinite wisdom and skill, integrity and gentleness, you were appointing all, and overruling all the incidents and windings of my history.
With shame and self-abhorrence I cover my mouth; I lay my face in the dust before you, because you have brought light out of my darkness. You have drawn out good from my evil. You have overruled all my mistakes and departures for my greater advance and your richer glory. You have atoned for all that I have done.
I have stumbled, and you have upheld me. I have fallen, and you have raised me up. I have wandered, and you have restored. I have wounded myself, and you have healed me.
Oh, what a God have you been to me! What a Father! What a Friend! Shall I ever distrust you, ever disbelieve you, ever wound you, ever leave you more? Alas, Lord, yes, a thousand times over, yes, this very moment, except for your restraining grace. "Hold me up, that I may be safe" (Ps. 119:117).
