September 7, Evening
C. H. Spurgeon · Modern retelling
"There is sorrow on the sea; it cannot be quiet." — Jeremiah 49:23 · KJV
Little do we know what sorrow may be on the sea at this moment. We are safe in our quiet room, but far away on the salt sea the hurricane may be cruelly hunting for the lives of men. Hear how the death fiends howl among the rigging, how every timber shudders as the waves beat like battering rams upon the vessel! God help you, poor drenched and weary ones! My prayer goes up to the great Lord of sea and land, that He would turn the storm to a calm and bring you to your desired haven. Nor should I offer prayer alone; I ought to try to help those hardy men who risk their lives so constantly. Have I ever done anything for them? What can I do? How often does the boisterous sea swallow up the sailor! Thousands of bodies lie where the pearls lie deep. There is death-sorrow on the sea, echoed in the long wail of widows and orphans; the salt of the sea is in many a mother's and wife's eyes. Remorseless waves, you have devoured the love of women and the support of households! What a resurrection there shall be from the caverns of the deep when the sea gives up her dead! Till then there will be sorrow on the sea. As if in sympathy with the woes of earth, the sea forever frets along a thousand shores — wailing with a sorrowful cry like its own seabirds, booming with a hollow crash of unrest, raving with discontent, chafing with hoarse wrath, or jangling with the voices of ten thousand murmuring pebbles. The roar of the sea may be joyful to a rejoicing spirit, but to the child of sorrow the wide, wide ocean is even more forlorn than the wide, wide world. This is not our rest, and the restless waves tell us so. There is a land where there is no more sea, and our faces are steadfastly set toward it; we are going to the place of which the Lord has spoken. Till then, we cast our sorrows on the Lord who trod the sea of old, and who makes a way for His people through its depths.