May 12

GOD’S SIGNATURE

Lev_19:11-18

God’s signature of love and right is on every bit of true life. He is love. And love, as God lives it, is not a weak sentimentality of mere talk, but the most thoughtful, sane thing imaginable. It makes an exquisite blend of the practical and the ideal. It burns selfishness out. And getting selfishness out makes one thoughtful in a sane, practical way of everyone he touches, and about everything—and in his own daily life.

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May 11

STRAIGHTEN UP!

Mat_22:34-40

Getting straight with God will make you straight with your next-door neighbor. The bother is that so much of our religion is of the pendulum kind; it swings this way and that, but, unlike a good clock, doesn’t keep the balance true. God is love. Love is a flame. It reaches quietly, subtly, but effectively, up through the whole life; and outside, too. Nothing within reach can escape its mellowing, shaping influence. It makes us good neighbors.

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May 10

GOD’S MEMORY

Zec_13:1-9

God never forgets. He couldn’t. His love prevents it. Through the long wait of the centuries, and the terrible, unending tragedy of sin, he clings to his purpose. The cry of his heart over the world’s need, and the ring of his insistent purpose to meet it, trail through the pages of the Book like the low sob of minor music out of a heart breaking with grief, yet holding steady in its inflexible purpose.

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May 9

PRACTICAL IDEALISM

Mrk_10:46-52

Jesus was a practical idealist. He had ideals, high ideals, the highest. He insisted upon them. Yet at every turn he was so simply, warmly practical. He was in the hurting-grip of his purpose to go to the Cross, yet he stopped at the cry of need. The whole world was filling his vision, yet the plea of a despised beggar stopped him. Only the Jesus-touch makes practical idealists, with broad vision and practical touch.

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May 8

LOVE AT CLIMAX

Mrk_10:32-45

Jesus felt the Cross. He felt it long before he reached it. Its shadow stretched far ahead and wrapped him in its black, clinging folds. He shrank from it, though he never flinched. The thorns tore, and the nails cut his heart, long before his body was touched by them. The shame of it stung to the quivering quick. But love held him steady. If it only might grip us, how Jesus loved us!

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May 7

"Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you" (Jos_1:3).

Beside the literal ground, unoccupied for Christ, there is the unclaimed, untrodden territory of Divine promises. What did God say to Joshua? "Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you," and then He draws the outlines of the Land of Promise-- all theirs on one condition: that they shall march through the length and breadth of it, and mea

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May 6

WHAT JESUS DID

Gal_5:1-13

The commonest belief everywhere, Christendom and heathendom alike, is that we earn salvation by what we do. The fear of not being able to pull through haunts men. Yet we’re saved only by what Jesus has done. He frees us from this haunting fear. We’re free to serve for love’s sake. And he fills our hearts with the love that makes us gentle and patient with all whom we touch, regardless of what they think or say.

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May 5 THE ZEST OF BEING FREE

THE ZEST OF BEING FREE

When your lungs are full of fresh air, how stale a shut-up room smells! When a man’s free of actual slavery, how irksome its bonds seem to him! The sheer delight of freedom can’t be told. So when once a man is free of other kinds of slavery—bad habits, lack of self-control, worrying, and that whole brood, what a sweet sense of freedom! Do you know about this? You may, today, if Jesus may have his way.

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May 4 "THE GOD STANDARD"

Exo_20:2-17

Man needs a standard. The yardstick protects the seller from giving too much, and the buyer from getting too little. The ten practical Sinai Words give us the true standard of life on both positive and negative sides —what belongs in and what out. They begin with God and take in our neighbors and ourselves. Putting God first makes the whole life ring true. By his help we can keep him first, and so keep true.

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May 3 "SHAPING THE CHILD"

Mrk_10:13-16; Mat_18:1-6

Children and women were commonly despised when Jesus came. He revealed their true worth and place. We need the children as really as they need us. Before the hurt of sin has come to them they teach us purity and simplicity, trust and honesty. They absorb their surroundings. Children will be just what their elders are, whom they touch daily. It’s only as our lives are yielded wholly to Jesus’ control that our children can come into their rightful her

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May 2

SHOES OFF, AND HAT, TOO

Mrk_10:1-12

Sin steals away reverence, and would make the finest things cheap and common. Love hallows everything it touches—real love. It reveals the sacredness of life’s relationships. It puts a touch of tender awe, of thoughtful reverence, on the sacred intimacies, the holy privacies, of love and home and daily contacts, that hallows and enriches these, and holds them true to what should be. Reverence deepens as we see the working of God in nature’

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May 1 "LIFE AT FLOOD"

LIFE AT FLOOD-TIDE

Mrk_10:17-31

A swift stream, at flood, frequently changes its channel, leaving the old, cutting out an entirely new bed. The Holy Spirit floods the life with love when he is allowed sway, Rom_5:5, literal meaning. The old standards that can’t stand the wash of this flood are left behind; new standards are set, flood-tide standards, with rich fertilizing silt, till we wonder how we ever lived the old way. And the upward tug of the new standards affects ever

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April 30

THERE’S SOMEONE HIDING BEHIND

Isa_28:1-7

Strong drink is more than merely a drink. It’s a doorway; one of Satan’s; one of his favorite doorways for getting into a man’s life. No, this isn’t merely a strong way of putting the thing: this is really so. When the intoxicant, however mild, is taken in, the door is open for loose talk, loose morals, lost ideals, and all that brood. Letting the stuff severely alone is the only safe rule.

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April 29 " Humility"

Humility is the foundation grace, the mother of all virtues and all strength. It does not mean thinking meanly of yourself and talking yourself down. It means getting God in the right place. Everything we have is from him. It is entrusted to us by him. It is at its best really only as it is used for him. When this gets hold of us it makes us friends of God, and crowds out every ungod like thing.

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April 28 "THE REAL HUMAN"

THE REAL HUMAN

1Co_13:1-13

Love is a fire. It burns out the impurities, puts warmth in the heart and a gentle glow in the life, and tempers all to the best. God is love. Man is love, too, when true to the image in which he was made.

Jesus is love in human garb. To let Jesus in as a passion, the burning passion, is to have selfishness, with all its brood, burned out, and the true ideal made real. Then we live the life that blesses other lives.

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