August 5 Daily Devotional

Devotional

The penitential grief of that child who has strayed from its heavenly Father is acute. When he comes to himself, resolves and exclaims, "I will arise, and go to my Father, and I will say to him, 'Father, I have sinned...'" (Luke 15:18), the sorrow is deep and bitter. The tremblings and doubts as to his reception are many: "Will he receive back such a wanderer as I have been? Will he take me once more to his love? Will he speak kindly to me again? Will he restore to me the joys of his salvation? Will he give me the blessed assurance of his forgiveness? Will he once more admit me with his children to his table?"

O weeping penitent, he will, indeed! God will comfort your present sorrow by the tokens of his forgiving love. He invites, he calls, he beseeches you to return to him. He is on the watch for you. He runs to meet you. He stretches out his hand to welcome you. He waits to be gracious. He yearns to clasp his penitential, weeping Ephraim to his heart. "But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him" (Luke 15:20).

Will a mother's love live on, warm and changeless, amid all the long years of her child's rebellion, forgetfulness, and ingratitude? When he returns, and gently knocks at her door, and trembling opens and falls, weeping and confessing, upon the bosom he had pierced with so many keen sorrows, will she not press him to a heart that never ceased to throb with an affection which no baseness could lessen, and which no dishonor could quench? And will God our Father—who inspired that mother's love, who gave it all its tenderness and intensity, and who made it not to change—turn his back upon a poor, returning child, who in penitence and confession seeks restoring, pardoning mercy at his feet? Impossible! Utterly impossible!

The love of God to his people is a changeless, quenchless, undying love. No backslidings can lessen it. No ingratitude can impair it. No forgetfulness can extinguish it. A mother may forget, yes, has forgotten her child; but God, never! "Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you" (Isa. 49:15). How touching, how impressive that image! It is a woman—that woman is a mother; that mother is a nursing mother—and still she may forget and abandon her little one, "yet will I not forget you," says your God and Father. Touching, heart-melting, heart-winning truth!

O Lord! We come unto you in Jesus' name! We have sinned. We have gone astray like lost sheep. We have followed the devices of our own hearts. We have wandered after other lovers. We have wounded our own peace. We have grieved your Holy Spirit. But, behold, we come unto you. We fall down at your feet. We dare not so much as look unto you. We blush to lift up our faces. Please receive us graciously and pardon us freely. So will we abhor ourselves, hate the sin you pardon, and love, adore, and serve the God who forgives and remembers it no more forever! As one whom his mother comforts, so do you comfort us!

Not what my hands have done
can save my guilty soul;
not what my toiling flesh has borne
can make my spirit whole.
Not what I feel or do
can give me peace with God;
not all my prayers and sighs and tears
can bear my awful load.

(Horatius Bonar, 1861, alt.)

Be sure to read the Preface by Octavius Winslow and A Note from the Editor by Larry E. Wilson.

Larry Wilson is an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. In addition to having served as the General Secretary of the Committee on Christian Education of the OPC (2000–2004) and having written a number of articles and booklets (such as God's Words for Worship and Why Does the OPC Baptize Infants) for New Horizons and elsewhere, he has pastored OPC churches in Minnesota, Indiana, and Ohio. We are grateful to him for his editing of Morning Thoughts, the OPC Daily Devotional for 2011.