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Christ's sleepless vigilance over his
people!
(Winslow, "A Word in Season from Christ to the Weary")
What an exalted and endearing truth is
Christ's sleepless vigilance over his people!
Imagine yourself threading your way along a
most difficult and perilous path, every step of
which is attended with pain and jeopardy, and
is taken with hesitancy and doubt.
Unknown to you and unseen, there is One
hovering each moment around you, checking
each false step, and guiding each doubtful one;
soothing each sorrow, and supplying each need.
All is calm and silent.
Not a sound is heard, not a movement is seen;
and yet, to your amazement, just at the critical
moment, the needed support comes; you know
not from where, you know not from whom.
This is no picture of imagination.
Are you a child of God on your pilgrimage to
paradise by an intricate and a perilous way?
Jesus is near to you at each moment, unseen
and often unknown.
You have at times stood speechless with awe
at the strange interposition on your behalf,
of providence and of grace. No visible sign
betokened the source of your help. There was
no echo of footfall at your side, no flitting of
shadow athwart your path. No law of nature
was altered nor suspended, the sun stood not
still, nor did the heavens open.
And yet deliverance, strange and effectual deliverance,
came at a moment most unexpected, yet most needed.
It was Jesus your Redeemer, your Brother, your
Shepherd, and your Guide. He it was who, hovering
around you, unknown and unobserved, kept you as
the apple of his eye, and sheltered you in the hollow
of his hand. It was he who armed you with bravery
for the fight, who poured strength into your spirit,
and grace into your heart, when the full weight of
calamity pressed upon them.
Thus has he always been to his children.
The eye that neither slumbers nor sleeps was upon you.
He knew in what furnace you were placed, and was
there to temper the flame when it seemed the severest.
He saw your frail vessel struggling through the tempest,
and he came to your rescue at the height of the storm.
How has he proved this in seasons of difficulty and doubt!
How often, at a crisis the most critical of
your history, the Lord has appeared for you!
Your lack has been supplied,
your doubt has been solved, and
your perplexity has been guided.
He has delivered...
your soul from death,
your eyes from tears, and
your feet from falling.
You are never for an instant....
out of his heart,
out of his thoughts,
out of his hands, or
out of his eye.
Go, and lay your weariness on Christ.
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