Morning and Evening: Daily Readings
by C. H. Spurgeon
Thursday Morning, December 1
Thou hast made summer and winter.
Psalm 74:17
My soul begin this wintry month with thy God. The cold snows and the piercing winds all remind thee that he keeps his covenant with day and night, and tend to assure thee that he will also keep that glorious covenant which he has made with thee in the person of Christ Jesus. He who is true to his Word in the revolutions of the seasons of this poor sin-polluted world, will not prove unfaithful in his dealings with his own well-beloved Son.
Winter in the soul is by no means a comfortable season, and if it be upon thee just now it will be very painful to thee: but there is this comfort, namely, that the Lord makes it. He sends the sharp blasts of adversity to nip the buds of expectation: he scattereth the hoarfrost like ashes over the once verdant meadows of our joy: he casteth forth his ice like morsels freezing the streams of our delight. He does it all, he is the great Winter King, and rules in the realms of frost, and therefore thou canst not murmur. Losses, crosses, heaviness, sickness,
poverty, and a thousand other ills, are of the Lord's sending, and come to us with wise design. Frosts kill noxious insects, and put a bound to raging diseases; they break up the clods, and sweeten the soul. O that such good results would always follow our winters of affliction!
How we prize the fire just now! how pleasant is its cheerful glow! Let us in the same manner prize our Lord, who is the constant source of warmth and comfort in every time of trouble. Let us draw nigh to him, and in him find joy and peace in believing. Let us wrap ourselves in the warm garments of his promises, and go forth to labours which befit the season, for it were ill to be as the sluggard who will not plough by reason of the cold; for he shall beg in summer and have nothing.
Evening, December 1
O that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men.
Psalm 107:8
If we complained less, and praised more, we should be happier, and God would be more glorified. Let us daily praise God for common mercies--common as we frequently call them, and yet so priceless, that when deprived of them we are ready to perish. Let us bless God for the eyes with which we behold the sun, for the health and strength to walk abroad, for the bread we eat, for the raiment we wear. Let us praise him that we are not cast out among the hopeless, or confined amongst the guilty; let us thank him for liberty, for friends, for family associations and comforts; let us praise him, in fact, for everything which we receive from his bounteous hand, for we deserve little, and yet are most plenteously endowed. But, beloved, the sweetest and the loudest note in our songs of praise should be of redeeming love. God's redeeming acts towards his chosen are for ever the favourite themes of their praise. If we know what redemption means, let us not withhold our sonnets of thanksgiving. We have been redeemed from the power of our corruptions, uplifted from the depth of sin in which we were naturally plunged. We have been led to the cross of Christ--our shackles of guilt have been broken off; we are no longer slaves, but children of the living God, and can antedate the period when we shall be presented before the throne without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. Even now by faith we wave the palm-branch and wrap ourselves about with the fair linen which is to be our everlasting array, and shall we not unceasingly give thanks to the Lord our Redeemer? Child of God, canst thou be silent? Awake, awake, ye inheritors of glory, and lead your captivity captive, as ye cry with David, Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Let the new month begin with new songs.
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EVENING THOUGHTS, or
DAILY WALKING WITH GOD
Octavius Winslow, 1858
"Let my prayer be set forth before you as
incense; and the lifting up of my hands
as the evening sacrifice." Psalm 141:2
"And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which brings not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire." Matthew 3:10
It is a solemn and a veritable thought, that human character is training and molding for eternity. Nothing in the universe of matter or of mind is stationary; everything is in motion; the motion is progressive—the movement is onward. Things whose being is limited by the present state, obeying the law of their nature, advance to their maturity, and then perish. They attain their appointed and ultimate perfection, and then die. Beings destined for another, a higher, and a more enduring state, are each moment tending towards that existence for which their natures are formed, and to which they aspire. There is, innate in man, a principle which incessantly yearns for, and reaches after, a state of perfection and deathlessness. He would sincerely, at times, quench in eternal night the spark of immortality which glows in his breast. A morbid distaste of life, or a pusillanimous shrinking from its evils, or the anticipation of some impending calamity—in most cases springing from a mind diseased, and destroying the power of self-control—has tended to inspire and to strengthen this desire. But eternal sleep is beyond his reach. He sighs for it, but it heeds not his moan; he invites it, but it comes not at his bidding; he inscribes the sentiment over the charnel-house of the dead, but it changes not their estate—he may slay the mortal, but he cannot touch the immortal. The compass of his soul points on to life. The long, bleak coast of eternity, its shores washed by the rough billows of time, stretches out before him; and towards it his bark each instant tends, and to it will assuredly arrive. Such is the chain that links man to the invisible world! So interesting and important a being is he. An eternity of happiness or of misery is before him; from it he cannot escape, and for one or the other, mind is educating, and character is forming.
A truth kindred in its solemnity to this is the nearness of judgment to every unconverted individual. To his eye—its vision dimmed by other and diverse objects—it may appear far remote. Damnation may seem to linger, judgment to tarry. Sentence executed against an evil work may appear delayed. But this is an illusion of the mental eye, a deception of Satan; a lie which the treacherous and depraved heart is eager to believe. Never was a snare of the devil more successful than this. But death, judgment, and hell are in the closest proximity to man; nearer than he has any conception of. His path winds along the very precipice that overhangs the billows of quenchless flame. Let him assume what position he may, high or low, fortified or unguarded, from that position there is but one step between him and death, between death and judgment, between judgment and a fixed and a changeless destiny. As one has truly remarked, what a creature of time is eternity! Time is, in some respects, more solemn and important than eternity. The present decides the future. The future is all that the present makes it. It is troubled or serene, inviting or revolting, happy or miserable, a blessing or a curse, as time, omnipotent time, ordains it.
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The Key to Christian Contentment
I once heard a comedian tell a joke about a pastor's sermon series on contentment in the Christian life. His punch line was the title of the series: "Content or Discontent: Which Tent Do You Live In?" Everyone enjoys a good laugh, but contentment in the Christian life is really not a laughing matter. Where it is lacking, its rightful place is occupied by the sin of discontentment—dissatisfaction with God. 
Psalm 73 is one man's confession of his journey from discontentment with God, through understanding and repentance, to being fully satisfied in God despite trying circumstances.
The first fourteen verses are the psalmist's description of his former discontentment—specifically, his envy of the wicked in their prosperity. This section ends with the psalmist grumbling against God for favoring the wicked while making his own life difficult (vv. 13-14). Then, in a moment of enlightenment, he realizes that the prosperity enjoyed by the wicked in this life is ultimately futile because God will destroy them in His final judgment (vv. 15-20).
Verses 21-28 are the psalmist's explanation of the truth that turned him around. From this final section of Psalm 73 we learn five important lessons about contentment and discontentment.
Discontentment produces unpleasant feelings. Describing his former discontentment with God, the psalmist writes, "When my heart was embittered and I was pierced within" (v. 21). These are admissions of the depression, anxiety, and even anger brought on by his grumbling, discontented, and complaining disposition toward God.
Discontentment results from unbiblical thinking. In verse 22 the psalmist connects his former bitterness of heart with his former lack of right thinking. "Then I was senseless and ignorant; I was like a beast before You." No one who is thinking biblically about his lot in life will be bitter toward God, because God's promises in the Bible assure us that every trial a Christian faces, no matter how severe or long-lasting, is for his or her ultimate good (Rom. 8:28; James 1:2-3; 1 Peter 1:3-9).
Contentment is found in looking to the future. Verse 24 says, "With Your counsel You will guide me, and afterward receive me to glory." Note the word "afterward." Glory, for the believer, comes later, not now. In Romans 8:18 Paul assures us that though we suffer now, glory is in our future. The same thought is found in 1 Peter 1:3-9. And that's the key to contentment—the willingness to do without for now, or to suffer for now, or to have hard times now, if God wills it so, and to wait until later for perfect comfort, ease, bliss, and prosperity.
Contentment is the result of comparison. In verse 25 the psalmist proceeds to compare God with everything else. "Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth." Certainly when he was hungry he desired food. When he was cold he desired warmth. When he was destitute he desired provision. When he was ill he desired to be well again. His point was not to say that being content means to have no desires at all other than God. Clearly he was comparing the relative value of anything and everything earthly—up to and including his own life—with the blessing of knowing the Lord.
Contentment is found in the person of God, not in what God gives us in this life. Verse 26 is really the highlight of the psalm: "My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." The first phrase was his way of saying, "Even if everything that could possibly go wrong, goes wrong," followed by his comforting conviction that even if this happens, God is all he really needs. Too many believers are happy in God only when God is giving them health, wealth, and prosperity. They are not content with God, in other words, but what God gives. But this psalmist had clearly come to the point where he was content with God Himself, even if God determined that his lot in life would be one of continual suffering, poverty, and pain. As he said in verse 28, "the nearness of God is my good."
One final note: the order of the wording in Psalm 73:26 is critical. The first half of verse 26 admits the likelihood of difficult trials, but then the second half proclaims that knowing God is more important. In other words, the knowledge of God overcomes any difficulty, producing contentment in any circumstance. Be careful not to turn verse 26 around in your own thinking—as if it said, "God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever, but I am still so sad," or "I am so tired of this pain," or "I am still so grieved because of my loss." If you dutifully remind yourself that knowing God is wonderful, but then turn your mental focus back to your difficulties as if they were bigger than God, your own heart will be embittered and you will be pierced within.
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