September 15 Daily Devotional

Eternal glories gleam afar,
To nerve my faint endeavour

This life of ours on earth is but a preparatory one.... You are tired and weary and you feel at times it is too much for you? Go back and look at your life and put it into the context of eternity. Stop and ask yourself what it all means. It is nothing but a preparatory school. This life is but the antechamber of eternity and all we do in this world is but anticipatory of that. Our greatest joys are but the first fruits and the foretaste of the eternal joy that is coming.... It is the sheer grind of daily life that gets us down.... But the answer is to look at it all and to put it all into its great context and to say, ‘We are going on to eternity and this is but the preparatory school’. What a difference that makes....

‘The world is too much with us,’ that is our trouble. We are too immersed in our problems. We need to look ahead, to anticipate, to look forward to the eternal glories gleaming afar. The Christian life is a tasting of the firstfruits of that great harvest which is to come. ‘Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him’.... Realize something in mind and heart of the glory of the place to which you are going. That is the antidote, that is the cure. The harvest we shall reap is certain, it is sure. ‘Therefore,’ says Paul to the Corinthians, ‘be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord’. Go on with your task whatever your feelings; keep on with your work. God will give the increase, He will send the rain of His gracious mercies as we need it. There will be an abundant harvest. Look forward to it. ‘Ye shall reap.’

Spiritual Depression, pp. 200–1