Expositions of Holy Scripture: PsalmsMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: Psalms
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Psalms -- Commentaries
The expression is varied in the 116th Psalm, which reads 'the land of
the living.' The really living are they who live in Jesus, and the real
light of the living is the sunshine that streams on those who thus live,
because they live in Him who not only pours His light upon their hearts,
but, by pouring it, turns themselves into 'light in the Lord.' We, too,
may have the brightness of His face irradiating our faces and
illuminating our paths, as with the beneficence of a better sunshine.
The Psalmist points us the way thus to walk in light. He vows that,
because his heart is full of the great mercies of his delivering God, he
will order all his active life as under the consciousness of God's eye
upon him, and then it will all be lightened as by a burst of sunshine.
Our brightest light is the radiance from the face of God whom we try to
love and serve, and the Psalmist's confidence is that a life of
observance of His commandments in which gratitude for deliverance is the
impelling motive to continual realisation of His presence, and an
accordant life, will be a bright and sunny career. You will live in the
sunshine if you live before His face, and however wintry the world may
be, it will be like a clear frosty day. There is no frost in the sky, it
does not go above the atmosphere, and high above, in serene and wondrous
blue, is the blaze of the sunshine. Such a life will be a guided life.
There will still remain many occasions for doubt in the region of
belief, and for perplexity as to duty. There will often be need for
patient and earnest thought as to both, and there will be no lack of
calls for strenuous effort of our best faculties in order to apprehend
what our Guide means us to do, and where He would have us go, but
through it all there will be the guiding hand. As the Master, with
perhaps a glance backwards to these words, said, 'He that followeth Me
shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.' If He is
in the light let us walk in the light, and to us it will be purity and
knowledge and joy.
THE FIXED HEART
'My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed; I will sing and give
praise.'--PSALM lvii. 7.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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