Mourning Ended From Thoughts
of God by John Macduff 1864 How precious are your thoughts unto
me, O God! Your sun will never set again,
and your moon will wane no more. The Lord will be your everlasting
light, and your days of mourning shall be ended. Isaiah chapter
60, verse 20. We have traced in previous meditations,
God's thoughts towards us from a past eternity, loving us with
an everlasting love. We have pondered some of his
present thoughts of tenderness, kindness, and sympathy towards
his suffering and sorrowing, his tried and tempted people.
But as his thoughts have been from everlasting, so are they
to everlasting. He who loved his people out of
darkness, says a now glorified saint, loves them into everlasting
light. It is again the mourner who is
the specially benefited heir to the preciousness of this thought
of God regarding a world of glory. Some prized earthly sun has set. Some fond earthly star that has
long lighted up the earthly pathway has been swept from the skies.
Hush your sorrow, says he. Dry your tears. These setting
suns and waning moons and quenched stars shall reappear as fixed
orbs in an unchanging sphere where the loved and lost shall
be loved never to be lost again. Yes, and better still, there
will be a nobler light, a peerless sun to supersede the need of
all earthly luminaries and lead you to be independent of all.
The city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine
in it, for the glory of God lights it, and the lamp is the light
thereof. Other luminaries may still be
there with their cherished radiance, but the city and the citizens
will have no need of them. They will not require the tiny
candle or glimmering starlight when they have the full blaze
of noon. They will not need the feeble
reel when they have the boundless, infinite ocean. God's works and
ways, His character and perfections, His wisdom and faithfulness,
His ever-present fellowship and love will form perpetual theme
and material for contemplation. The ever new song of the ransomed
will be the old strain of earth. How precious also are your thoughts
unto me, O God, and the days of your mourning shall be ended.
Morning One, think of this. Weeping days here on Earth. Joyful days yonder. The muffled
harp here. The golden harp yonder. The ocean
swept with storm and tempest here. The crystal sea unruffled
with one wave yonder. the dewdrops and teardrops of
earthly sorrow, as they sparkle in the radiance of the risen
sun of eternity, will be so many little mirrors reflecting the
glory of God, lustrous witnesses of His faithfulness and love.
Life may now be to you a dreary winter landscape, its once sunny
hollows and green nooks, the crevices of spring and summer
embedded with snow. But a glorious resurrection time
is at hand, when the gladsome announcement shall be made. The
winter is past. The rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth.
The time of the singing of birds has come. O blessed prospect! In God's light, we shall see
light. The unexplained thoughts of the
present all made luminous in the glory of that unsetting sun. Not one floating cloud discernible
on the boundless horizon. Now we see things imperfectly
as in a poor mirror. But then we will see everything
with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial
and incomplete. But then I will know everything
completely just as God knows me now. The Lord Almighty has
sworn this oath It will all happen as I have planned. It will come
about according to my purposes.