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MEDITATION:

Written by Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892), an English preacher. This is an excerpt from the devotional “365 Days with C.H. Spurgeon.”

Faith makes the crown of eternal life glitter before the believer’s eye; it waves before him the palm branch. Sense pictures the grave, loss, suffering, defeat, death, forgetfulness: but faith points to the resurrection, the glorious appearance of the Son of Man, the calling of the saints from every corner of the earth, the clothing of them all in their triumphant array, and the entrance of the blood-washed conquerors into the presence of God with eternal joy. Thus, faith makes us out of weakness to become strong. Let me remind you that the essential ingredients of faith’s comfort are just these: faith sees the invisible and beholds the substance of that which is far off: faith believes in God, a present, powerful God, full of love and wisdom, effecting his decree, accomplishing his purpose, fulfilling his promise, glorifying his Son. Faith believes in the blood of Jesus, in the effectual redemption on the cross, it believes in the power of the Holy Spirit, his might to soften the stone and to put life into the very ribs of death. Faith grasps the reality of the Bible; she does not look upon it as a sepulcher with a stone laid thereon, but as a temple in which Christ reigns, as an ivory palace out of which he comes riding in his chariot, conquering and to conquer. Faith does not believe the gospel to be a worn-out scroll, to be rolled up and put away; she believes that the gospel instead of being in its dotage is in its youth; she anticipates for it a manhood of mighty strugglings and a grand maturity of blessedness and triumph. Faith does not shirk the fight; she longs for it, because she foresees the victory.

PRAYER:

This prayer is from the Gelasian Sacramentary, a book of Christian liturgy, which is the oldest western liturgical book that has survived. The book is linked to Pope Gelasius I and was compiled near Paris around 750.

Almighty and eternal God,

the Comfort of the sad,

the Strength of sufferers,

hear the prayers of those who call to you in any trouble,

that they may rejoice to know

your mercy is with them in their afflictions;

through Christ our Lord. Amen.