March 10, Evening
C. H. Spurgeon · Modern retelling
"Man . . . is of few days, and full of trouble." — Job 14:1 · KJV
It may be of great service to us, before we fall asleep, to remember this mournful fact, for it may lead us to sit loose to earthly things. There is nothing very pleasant in recollecting that we are not above the shafts of adversity, but it may humble us and keep us from boasting, as the psalmist did in our morning's portion, "My mountain standeth firm; I shall never be moved." It may keep us from taking too deep a root in this soil, from which we are so soon to be transplanted into the heavenly garden. Let us recall the frail tenure on which we hold our temporal mercies. If we would remember that all the trees of earth are marked for the woodman's axe, we would not be so ready to build our nests in them. We should love, but love with the love that expects death and reckons on separations. Our dear relations are only loaned to us, and the hour when we must return them to the lender's hand may be even at the door. The same is certainly true of our worldly goods. Do not riches take wings and fly away? Our health is just as precarious. Frail flowers of the field, we must not count on blooming forever. There is a time appointed for weakness and sickness, when we shall have to glorify God by suffering, and not by earnest activity. There is no single point at which we can hope to escape the sharp arrows of affliction; out of our few days, not one is secure from sorrow. Man's life is a cask full of bitter wine; he who looks for joy in it had better seek honey in an ocean of brine. Beloved reader, set not your affections on things of earth, but seek the things that are above; for here the moth devours and the thief breaks through, but there all joys are perpetual and eternal. The path of trouble is the way home. Lord, make this thought a pillow for many a weary head!