October 12 Daily Devotional

Bible Reading:

Psalm 66:12:

¹²"O, my God, thou hast brought me out into an abundant refreshing." (Dutch Version)

Devotional:

In the world above, an entirely different stamp is imprinted upon life from that here on earth. In that realm of glory is no sin and, therefore, no redemption; no misery and hence also no deliverance. Neither can there be any transition there from doubt into faith, from weakness into strength, from sorrow into joy, from mourning into being comforted. In brief, everything that, by the single fact of sin and misery, brings into our life on earth continual breaks, disturbance, transition, restoration and higher exaltation, is excluded from the life eternal.

This continuous change was likewise foreign to the life in paradise. But when sin entered there, paradise was lost and the curse came upon our earthly existence.

Not as though in paradise the deadly tediousness of monotony prevailed, or that in heaven about God's throne the absence of all change throws a somber pall upon the life of the blessed. Without endless variation no higher life is conceivable. And that richer development of life before God's Throne shall once exceed and excel anything we have known on earth in the way of higher life-development or have dreamed in poetic imagination.

But the life hereafter can not be measured after the standard of this life. It is different in kind. It bears an entirely different character. It obeys a wholly different law. It interests and charms by an entirely different beauty, wealth and enjoyment. But for this very reason it remains to us an object of faith and hope, and does not lend itself to a forecasting in this life. And though figures of speech borrowed from this life may be used in Scripture in order to give us an impression of it, every one feels that the marrow full of fat and the unmixed wine of the marriage-feast of the Lamb serve exclusively to quicken the impression of festal joy, and not in the least to indicate wherein it shall consist.

It is not yet revealed what we shall be. Enough that we know that it shall be a life in endless happiness and glory. But how this happiness shall once disclose itself, and in what form it will present itself to us, faith leaves with God. And upon that Father Who is in heaven and upon His Son Jesus Christ, all the longing of the soul on the part of God's children centers itself in expectation of that glory.

Here on earth, on the other hand, sin characterizes our entire life and our whole human existence. And this by no means merely in the sense that continuously every day and night sin is committed, and that these sins bring ruin; but more in this sense, that sin breaks up our human life, that it removes its supports and makes them alternate, and causes the way along which life moves forward not to stretch out straight before you, but restlessly to go up and down; now through the depths, then across heights, now through the light, then through the dark, now marked by laughter, now by the weeping of those that mourn.

That there is pleasure and pain; that there is joy and sorrow; that there is health and sickness; that there is birth and death; a carrying in to baptism and a carrying out to the grave; that there is exhaustion and revival of strength; that there is corruption of soul and conversion; that there is temptation and then allurement after Christ; in brief, that our whole human life reaches upward and breaks into endless contrasts, all springs from the one all-dominating fact of the existence of sin.

If you are once convinced that without sin there would be no misery, no sickness and no death in the earth, then it is sin which puts its stamp of rupture and of healing upon our entire earthly life, and it would be most interesting for once to picture your entire human existence from the viewpoint of this rupture.

Without sin there would be no judges to pronounce justice, no physicians to heal the sick, no ministers of the Word to preach the Word of God, no work of mercy nor of compassion, no Church of God on earth.

From this, of course, it may not be inferred that this broken life which has burst into all sorts of differences and contrasts is our real life. Life in holy harmony and unbroken unity stands infinitely higher and shall one day show itself to be our real, truly human existence, as it now is for God's angels.

But it does follow from this that our life here on earth must be one that is continually disturbed and shaken, continually harassed; and that our life here on earth becomes ever richer, more interesting and more significant in the measure in which we are exposed to stronger tempest-tossings and the height and depth experiences of our existence assume stronger proportions.

These vicissitudes in our life are unequal. With one they are far more difficult and striking than with another. There are those who are scarcely touched and consequently know but very little exaltation in life. But there are others who are hurled into the deepest abyss, and who are afterwards able to take most blessed walks on the mountains of God's holiness.

Of the latter, one is continually the speaker in the Psalms.

Hence, on one side, that call from the depths of misery, and complaint that the bands of death and hell strike terror to his soul, and on the other side, that jubilant exultation that tells of deliverance and redemption, and gives birth to the grateful acknowledgment that God has led him forth into a "very abundant refreshing" (Psalm 66:12, Dutch Ver.).

This refreshing means renewal of strength. A fresh team before the wagon means one that comes from pasture in the fullness of strength. A fresh corps of troops means a battle-array which has taken no part as yet at the front, but marches forward with unimpaired vigor.

And so there is a refreshing when you come out from a period of deadly exhaustion of soul, of utter loss of strength, of inner undermining, and now rejuvenated and renewed in vitality you feel yourself given back by God's grace to yourself, in order that with renewed courage and in the full realization of God's grace you may take up the battle of life again, as though nothing had ever been the matter with you.

This refreshing can therefore bear a two-fold character. It can be a refreshing from spiritual declension, but it can also be a refreshing from reverses in your lot in life.

You may have come to the valley of the shadow of death, and now walk again in the lovely light of the sun which illumines your entire life.

The depression and distress which trouble, adversity, bereavement and suffering bring can come down upon your heart with the weight of a ton, and almost crush it. By far the greater number remain strangers to this. They, indeed, likewise drink their cup of sorrow and mourning, but it is handed to them by measure. They would have no strength of soul to endure more. But there have always been a few against whose breast the waves of the bitter lot in life have beaten pitilessly and without sparing. Only their innate heroic nature, through God's grace, kept them from fainting.

Such a period can continue long, in spite of the fact that this persistence of depression and suffering is unspeakably exhausting and prostrating.

But when, at last, there comes an end to this suffering, and sunny days arrive, and the oil of gladness is given for mourning, then, not infrequently, God the Lord is pleased to bless such a bearer of the Job-image with a superabundance of the joy of life. And then it is from his lips that, with a cry in which his whole soul participates, the song of rejoicing proceeds: "O, my God, thou hast brought me out into an abundant refreshing."

More quiet, but still more blessed, it is when this superabundant refreshing comes upon us spiritually.

Of course this only comes to the man who lives spiritually, who inwardly leads a spiritual life and who can thirst after God as the hart thirsts after the water-brooks.

The thousands upon thousands who live along unconcernedly, without ever missing the fellowship with God, have no part in this.

But if you are aware of a spiritual life in your soul; if you know what it is to have been initiated in the secret walk with God; and if you have learned every morning and every evening to draw your real strength from the seeking and finding of your God; then life divides itself for you into two sharply contrasted sorts of days: days when you are rich in your God, and living near unto Him you feel your soul within you leap for joy; but alongside and over against these the other days when heaven seems like brass, and when, thrown back upon yourself, you perceive nothing but shadows and darkness within yourself, and you feel that you have wandered away from God like a lost sheep.

This can be a result of committed sins, but it can also be that God purposely leads you through the darkness in order to try your faith, and inwardly to operate the more deeply upon you with unseen grace.

So there may be days and weeks, yea, sometimes months, that God's Face is hidden from you; that no star breaks through in the dark sky of your soul; and that, feeling yourself forsaken of God, you mourn within yourself with a sorrow which the world does not know and does not understand, but which cuts you sorely through the heart.

But this suffering is only for a time.

In the feeling of forsakenness you were not forsaken, but God was operating on you with a grace, the blessed result of which you would only presently know and understand.

And when, finally, these days of spiritual darkness have come to their end, and the light breaks through again, and God comes back to reveal Himself to you in the fullness of His grace, Oh, then for you there is a superabundant refreshing.

And then you perceive it, you acknowledge it, that if God had not led you through this depth of forsakenness, you would never have experienced such a thoroughgoing joy as has now become your portion.

Only after having led you through this depth of darkness was God able to lead you out to so abundant a refreshing of your entire inner existence.

This devotional classic offers 110 meditations on a single thought from Psalm 73: "As for me, it is good to be near to God." The author states, "The fellowship of being near unto God must become reality ... it must permeate and give color to our feeling, our perceptions, our sensations, our thinking, our imagining, our willing, our acting, our speaking. It must not stand as a foreign factor in our life, but it must be the passion that breathes throughout our whole existence."

The meditations reflect the blending of spiritual vigor with doctrinal loyalty so consistently expressed in the life of Abraham Kuyper. These are devotions with true substance, avoiding the extremes about which Kuyper adds a word of caution: "Stress in creedal confession, without drinking from the Living Fountain, runs dry in barren orthodoxy, just as truly as spiritual emotion, without clearness in confessional standards, makes one sink in the bog of sickly mysticism."

Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) was a Dutch political leader and Calvinist theologian. Elected to parliament in 1874, he became Prime Minister in 1901 and served in that capacity until 1905. As a theologian, he revived a systematic, orthodox Calvinism. He founded the Free Reformed Church and the Free University of Amsterdam. His other works include Principles of Sacred Theology, Lectures on Calvinism, and The Work of the Holy Spirit

Further information about Abraham Kuyper's life can be seen in the translator's "Biographical Note"; further information about To Be Near Unto God can be Abraham Kuyper's "Preface" to that book.