The same thing is going on every day. It is generally a moment--either an
opening or a culminating one--that really does the work. It is not so
often a whole sermon as a single short sentence in it that wings God's
arrow to a heart. It is seldom a whole conversation that is the means of
bringing about the desired result, but some sudden turn of thought or
word, which comes with the electric touch of God's power. Sometimes it is
less than that; only a look (and what is more momentary?) has been used
by Him for the pulling down of strongholds. Again, in our own quiet
waiting upon God, as moment after moment glides past in the silence at
His feet, the eye resting upon a page of His Word, or only looking up to
Him through the darkness, have we not found that He can so irradiate one
passing moment with His light that its rays never die away, but shine on
and on through days and years? Are not such moments proved to have been
kept for Him? And if some, why not all?
This view of moments seems to make it clearer that it is impossible to
serve two masters, for it is evident that the service of a moment cannot
be divided. If it is occupied in the service of self, or any other
master, it is not at the Lord's disposal; He cannot make use of what is
already occupied.
Oh, how much we have missed by not placing them at his disposal! What
might He not have done with the moments freighted with self or loaded
with emptiness, which we have carelessly let drift by! Oh, what might
have been if they had all been kept for Jesus! How He might have filled
them with His light and life, enriching our own lives that have been
impoverished by the waste, and using them in far-spreading blessing and
power!
While we have been undervaluing these fractions of eternity, what has our
gracious God been doing in them? How strangely touching are the words,
'What is man, that Thou shouldest set Thine heart upon him, and that Thou
shouldest visit him every morning, and _try him every moment?_' Terribly
solemn and awful would be the thought that He has been trying us every
moment, were it not for the yearning gentleness and love of the Father
revealed in that wonderful expression of wonder, 'What is man, that Thou
shouldest set Thine heart upon him?' Think of that ceaseless setting of
His heart upon us, careless and forgetful children as we have been! And
then think of those other words, none the less literally true because
given under a figure: 'I, the Lord, do keep it; _I will water it every
moment._'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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