March 30, Evening
C. H. Spurgeon · Modern retelling
"Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord." — Lamentations 3:40 · KJV
The wife who fondly loves her absent husband longs for his return; a long, drawn-out separation from her lord is a kind of death to her spirit. So it is with souls who love the Savior much: they must see His face; they cannot bear that He should be away on the mountains of Bether and hold communion with them no more. A reproachful glance, an uplifted finger, is grievous to loving children who fear to offend their tender father, and are only happy in his smile. Beloved, it was once so with you. A text of Scripture, a threatening, a touch of the rod of affliction, and you went to your Father's feet, crying, "Show me wherefore Thou contendest with me." Is it so now? Are you content to follow Jesus afar off? Can you contemplate suspended communion with Christ without alarm? Can you bear to have your Beloved walking contrary to you, because you walk contrary to Him? Have your sins separated between you and your God, and is your heart at rest? Oh, let me affectionately warn you, for it is a grievous thing when we can live contentedly without the present enjoyment of the Savior's face. Let us labor to feel what an evil thing this is — little love to our own dying Savior, little joy in our precious Jesus, little fellowship with the Beloved! Hold a true Lent in your souls, while you sorrow over your hardness of heart. But do not stop at sorrow! Remember where you first received salvation. Go at once to the cross. There, and there only, can you get your spirit quickened. No matter how hard, how insensible, how dead we may have become, let us go again in all the rags and poverty and defilement of our natural condition. Let us clasp that cross, let us look into those languid eyes, let us bathe in that fountain filled with blood — this will bring back our first love; this will restore the simplicity of our faith and the tenderness of our heart.