4611 The Shut Door
When the disciples locked the doors, Christ knew He was sure of a welcome. He could not get their ear because of the din and confusion that came through the open doors. Closing the door to the world is opening the door to the Master. Don’t be afraid of shutting the door. It is the best invitation for the Master to enter.
—Christian Herald
4612 Letting The Lord Love Her
“What do you do during the day?” a friend asked an elderly Scotch woman who lived alone. “Well,” she said, “I get my hymnbook and sing. Then I get the Bible and let the Lord speak to me. When I get tired of reading and cannot sing anymore, I just sit still and let the Lord love me!”
4613 Bonhoeffer’s Seminary
In a recent issue of The Christian Century, there is a moving account of life in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s seminary in Germany in the days before the war. Says the author of the article, who was a student under Bonhoeffer:
We members of the community rose in silence each morning, then assembled in silence in the dining room for prayers. None of us was allowed to speak before God Himself had spoken to us and we had sung our morning praise to Him. After a hymn, one or more psalms were read antiphonally. The Old Testament lesson was followed by a verse or two or a hymn, a hymn that was used for a week or more. After the reading from the New Testament, one of us offered prayers. Then, again in silence, we went to our dormitories to make our beds and to put things in order.
Next came breakfast, during which we continued to practice taciturnitas; after breakfast we retired to our studies, which each of us shared with one or two of his fellows. For half an hour our task was one of meditation on a short passage from the German Bible, a passage about which we were asked to center our thoughts for a week, not to gather ideas for our next sermon to examine it exegetically but to discover what it had to say to us. We were to pray over it, to think our life in its light and to use it as a basis for intercession on behalf of our brethren, our families, and all whom we knew to be in special need or difficulty. Such meditation did not come easily to us, for few of us had learned to read the Bible devotionally.
Evening prayers were at 9:30 P.M., taking much the same form as those of the morning; thereafter we were expected to maintain silence until bedtime, for God’s Word was to be the last word of the day just as it had been the first.
—Christianity Today
4614 Luther And Others On Devotions
Luther, when most pressed with his gigantic toils, said, “I have so much to do, that I cannot get on without three hours a day of praying.” Gen. Havelock rose at four, if the hour for marching was six, rather than lose the precious privilege of communion with God before setting out. Sir Matthew Hale says, “If I omit praying, and reading God’s word, in the morning, nothing goes well all day.”
4615 More On Devotions
John Quincy Adams was a president of the United States, who was noted in connection with his custom of studying the Bible each morning: “It seems to me that most suitable manner of beginning the day.” Lord Cains, one of the busiest men in Great Britain, devoted the first hour-and-a-half of every day to Bible study and secret prayer.
We have all heard how Chinese Gordon, while in the Sudan, had a certain sign before his tent each morning which meant that he must be left alone. A friend recently saw his Bible in the Queen’s apartments at Windsor, and told us that the pages of that book, which was his companion in the morning watch, were so worn that one could scarcely read the print.
—J. H. Bomberger
4616 The President Led In Devotions
In a meeting to pray for President Garfield’s recovery, one of the classmates said, “Twenty-six years ago tonight, and at this very hour, our class was on the top of Graylock to spend the Fourth of July. As we were about to lie down to sleep, Garfield took out his pocket Testament and said, “I am in the habit of reading a chapter every night at this time with my mother. Shall I read aloud?” They assented, and when he had read he asked the oldest member of the class to pray. And there, in the night, and on the mountain-top, we prayed with him for whom we are now assembled to pray.”
—James E. Denton
4617 A Cartoonist’s Habit
Cartoonist Vaughan R. Shoemaker, cartoonist for the Chicago Daily News, creator of “John Q. Public,” Pulitzer Prize Winner spoke thus for his Saviour:
“What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and lose his own soul?” Any one of us is fortunate if we gain so much as a very small piece of this whole world, much less the whole of it. What if we did? What would it profit us?
I was honest enough with myself back in 1926 to admit I was concerned about my soul. I was simple enough to accept the simple gospel and accepted Jesus Christ as my Saviour.
To this day I have never been sorry. Having had little education or natural ability, for any success I have gained as a cartoonist I must give credit to God. I wouldn’t dare start a day without first starting it on my knees, with God, beside my drawing-board. I gain wisdom from Him.
4618 Take Three 15-Minutes
When Billy Sunday was converted and joined the church, a Christian man put his arm on the young man’s shoulder and said, “William, there are three simple rules I can give to you, and if you will hold to them you will never write “backslider” after your name.
“Take 15 minutes each day to listen to God talking to you; take 15 minutes each day to talk to God; take 15 minutes each day to talk to others about God.”
This young convert was deeply impressed and determined to make these the rules of his life. From that day onward throughout his life he made it a rule to spend the first moments of his day alone with God and God’s Word. Before he read a letter, looked at a paper or even read a telegram, he went first to the Bible, that the first impression of the day might be what he got directly from God.
APPLICATIONS TO DEVOTIONAL LIFE
4619 Personal Pronoun “I”
Martin Luther once said, “The heart of religion is in its personal pronoun.” I once attended, in the Royal Albert Hall, London, a magnificent rendering of Handel’s “Messiah” by a choir of several hundred. The friend who accompanied me was a dear saint of God, then in his seventies. When the “Hallelujah Chorus” rose to its stupendous heights, “King of kings, and Lord of lords,” my friend could hardly contain himself. The tears were streaming from his clear, blue eyes and he whispered to me, “That was my Savior they were singing about.” I shall never forget the meaning he put into that word “my.”
—Leslie D. Weatherhead
4620 Expressing Gratitude In Africa
In another African dialect, the Karre, the expression for thankfulness is “to sit down on the ground before” another. A thankful Karre will go to the home of his benefactor and sit on the ground before his hut. No word need be spoken; his silent vigil signifies his gratitude. The man who is thankful to God, therefore, sits before God to enjoy his presence. He is never satisfied merely to tip his hat to God as he passes; gratitude demands that he seek God’s presence and fellowship.
—Roger William Thomas
4621 Importance Of Planning
Nelaton, the great French surgeon, once said that if had four minutes in which to perform an operation on which a life depended, he would take one minute to consider how best to do it.
4622 Special Meeting With Others
Not long ago a man many times a millionaire granted me ten minutes of his time for an interview. I wished to enlist him in a special matter and spent several hours in preparation to make the most of this opportunity. It was a humiliating thought which came to me afterward, that I was not in the habit of tying myself with like earnestness to preparation for meeting God. Our Mohammedan cook in Palestine devoted several hours each week to mere bodily preparation for his five daily seasons of prayer.
—J. R. Mott
4623 Bugle Sound: “The Still”
In the British navy, whenever any sudden disaster, such as an explosion, occurs, it is the bugler’s duty to play what is called “The Still,” and when the men hear it each is to stop perfectly quiet for a moment and recollect his senses and thus be better prepared for intelligent action in the emergency.
—J. H. Bomberger
4624 Da Vinci’s Reflections
Before undertaking any new project, Leonardo Da Vinci would sit for days without moving his hand, lost in deep reflection. It was so when Filippo Lippi transferred to him an order for an altar picture in a monastery. The complaint of the prior was of no avail. Without the vision of an ideal, Da Vinci would not lift a brush to the canvas.
This fact was especially so in his great masterpiece, “The Last Supper.” For days he waited the moment when the face of the Christ should be revealed to him in a manner worthy to represent His matchless perfection. The vision finally came and all-after ages have been ennobled by its reproduction.
—Preachers’ Magazine
4625 One Day Throwing Pebbles
Charles Kinsley says of Turner, the great painter, that he spent hours and hours in mere contemplation of nature without brush or pencil. An authentic story is told of how Turner was once known to have spent a whole day sitting upon a rock throwing pebbles into a lake. When evening came his brother painters showed him their sketches and rallied him upon having done nothing.
He said: “I have done this at least: I have learned how a lake looks when pebbles are thrown into it.” None of his fellow-students could ever paint the ripples as Turner painted them. Many men and women find to their sorrow and dismay that when the opportunity of a lifetime is presented to them they are utterly unable to grasp it because of lack of preparation.
—J. H. Bomberger
4626 Mood-Making Colonnade
Out in California at the Exposition they built a Fine Arts Palace. Then the architect built a beautiful colonnade in a crescent shape around the Arts Palace. This colonnade was hung with flowers, planted with shrubbery, and lined with beautiful statuary. I remember that Piccirilli’s “The Outcast” was there, and a hundred other pieces. There was a lagoon outside of the crescent colonnade. One dreamed of Athens, Rome, Italy, Art, Music, Poetry, as one drifted through the colonnade. It was necessary to go through the colonnade before getting to the pictures.
The architect told me that he built the approach to the Fine Arts Palace in this fashion because most of those who visited the exposition would come from the Zone, the Palace of Machinery or Horticulture, the blatant cries of popcorn vendors, the rattle of wheels, and the shout of fakers; and they would be in no mood to feel, much less to appreciate pictures. Therefore he made it necessary for them to pass through this mood-making colonnade before they got to the pictures. Then they were in the mood of feeling and understanding great art. So it is with prayer.
—W. L. Stidger
4627 Carnegie’s Flashes
In his book The Wilson Era, Josephus Daniels, secretary of the navy under Wilson, relates how he once asked Andrew Carnegie what was the secret of his remarkable success. Carnegie replied, “I owe it all to my flashes.”
Mystified, Daniels said, “What do you mean by “flashes”?”
“All my life,” replied Carnegie, “I woke up early in the morning, and always there came into my mind with the waking a flash telling me what to do that day, and if I followed those flashes, I always succeeded.”
“You mean,” said Daniels, “that you have heavenly visions, and like the man in the Scriptures you were not disobedient to your visions?”
“Call it that if you like,” answered Carnegie, “or call it flashes; but it was the following of those silent admonitions and directions which brought me the success you say I have achieved.”
Whatever may be said about the flashes in the business world, there is no doubt about flashes of divine impulse in the moral and spiritual world. When they come, happy is the man who, like Paul, is not disobedient to the heavenly vision.
4628 Rest Pauses
A man named Frederick W. Taylor, may provide some answers. Taylor worked for a large steel mill during the Spanish-American War 1898.
He was an ambitious young executive and was one of the first to apply scientific methods—as then known—to study the productivity of manual labor. In those days there were no cranes to load steel bars onto railroad cars. It was backbreaking manual work and, after some experimentation, Taylor concluded that the men could do more work if they took rest pauses at definite intervals.
He induced some of the workers to try his new method. He offered a dollar a day more and flattered them by calling them his “high-priced men.” Under this system, a whistle was blown after the men had carried iron for twelve minutes. At this whistle they were to sit down and rest. After three minutes’ rest, the whistle was blown again as a signal for the men to resume work.
The result—the amount of iron carried increased from 12 and a half to 47 tons a day! This seeming miracle ushered in the era of rest pauses, the forerunner of today’s coffee breaks.
—Selected
4629 “The Book Came Alive”
Dr. Howard W. Pope tells the glory of a young lady who read a certain book and, having completed it, remarked that it was the dullest book she had read in many a day. Not long after this, she met a certain young man. In the course of time their friendship ripened into love, and they became engaged. During a visit in the home of his fiancee one evening, she said to him, “I have a book in my library which was written by a man whose name and even initials are the same as yours. Is not that a singular coincidence?” “I do not think so,” he replied. “Why not?” “For the simple reason that I wrote the book.”
Dr. Pope concludes the story by remarking that the young lady sat up until the early morning hours to read the book again. When she had completed it, she thought it the most interesting book she had ever read! The secret? She now knew and loved the author.
—Al Bryant
4630 Christ Painted For Himself
Many years ago one of the great artists in Europe decided to portray his conception of Christ on canvas. His best friends expressed their disappointment with his production. Later he made a second attempt and met the same disapproval. Undaunted, he visited a number of the leading art galleries and examined the famous presentations of former artists. With greater concentration than ever and over a longer period, he completed his third attempt, only to be told it was not as good as his first.
Disheartened with his failure, he determined to give up painting altogether. In his disconsolation he visited a resort in the country. During the second night he dreamt that Christ came to him and asked why he was so disheartened. After he told of his grief, Christ said to him, “Did you know that you cannot paint Me for anyone else?” But he could paint Christ for himself.
—The Prairie Overcomer
4631 Too Busy To Love
A father and his young daughter were great friends and much in each other’s company. Then the father noted a change in his daughter. If he went for a walk, she excused herself from going. He grieved about it, but could not understand. When his birthday came, she presented him with a pair of exquisitely worked slippers, saying, “I have made them for you.”
Then he understood what had been the matter for the past three months, and he said, “My darling, I like these slippers very much, but next time buy the slippers and let me have you all the days. I would rather have my child than anything she can make for me.”
Some of us are so busy for the Lord that He cannot get much of us. To us He would say, “I know your works, your labor, your patience, but I miss the first love.” (Rev. 2:2–4)
—G. Campbell Morgan
4632 Morning, Noon, And Night
A traveler visited a church famous for its stained-glass window. The exterior was plain, there was no beauty in the windows from the outside. The first look within was a disappointment. The guide told the traveler to go forward and look eastward where the sun was rising. A marvelous vision broke upon him of Jesus in the Temple with the doctors. The guide asked him to return about noon. Another window flamed in the sun with Christ walking upon the sea. He was requested to come yet again at sunset, and the rays fell upon Christ on the cross, amazingly touching and convincing.
—Mrs. A. E. Janzen
4633 Trumpeter’s Reserve Wind
It is said that the celebrated Handel one day gave a grand musical entertainment in London. Among the band there was a German trumpeter. Handel turned to him and said, “Blow louder,” and he did so; after some minutes he repeated the same words, and he blew with all his power.
A third time he called on him, “Louder.” The trumpeter was impatient, and answered, “You call louder, sir; but where is the wind to come from?”
4634 The Knight’s Vigil
In the Tate Gallery there is a picture by John Pettie entitled The Vigil, in which a young knight clad in armour is seen kneeling before an altar with his sword held up before him. This vigil of arms was one of the religious exercises which in the Middle Ages preceded the conferment of knighthood. After certain rites had been observed the candidate was conducted into the chapel, and there had to keep his vigil until sunrise, passing the night by “bestowing himself in visions and prayer.”
This is the moment chosen by the artist. Dawn steals in amongst the silences, and touches with its faint light the dim aisles, but the knight is not conscious of it. His noble but haggard young face is turned still toward the altar, while his eyes have the dreamy look of one who has long meditated on divine and holy things. Helmet and armour are laid upon the raised-up step leading to the altar, but his sword is held up before him in consecration, and its hilt makes the form of the Cross.
In this spirit he desires to live his life, and to consecrate his knighthood, to hold the Cross before him, as he is now doing, to follow where it leads, and to bear what it demands.
—James Burns
4635 Roman Temple’s Fire
A continual fire was kept burning in the Roman temple of Vesta, and if for any reason it was allowed to go out, all public and private business came immediately to a stop and was not resumed until the fire was burning again.
The theme of a number of the old-time prophets was that those who served God must keep the fire burning in their souls. Jesus said, in Revelation, that if we were neither hot nor cold we should be cast out (Rev. 3:16).
—Preachers’ Magazine
4636 Twenty-One Days Adrift
Edward V. Rickenbacker, World War I flying ace, and seven servicemen drifted for twenty-four days under a searing sun after their plane was forced down in the Pacific. Their only food was four oranges, a seagull and two fish. Some have tried to survive on less in the spiritual life.
4637 When Wounded By Satan
There is a small, weasel-like animal called the ichneumon. It can overcome and destroy a venomous snake of over a yard long. It is said that the ichneumon attacks a snake only when it is near a certain plant whose leaves contain an antidote for snake bite. When bitten, the little creature immediately retreats to the life-saving plant and nibbles its leaves. It is restored and ready to renew the attack. Each time it is bitten, it goes to the plant and then returns to fight the enemy.
4638 Song Of The Lark
Almost everybody has seen copies of “The Song of the Lark,” a famous painting by Jules Breton, the French artist. I wonder how many realize that there is no lark in the picture. The picture is a portrayal of the human soul glorying in one of nature’s loveliest voices rather than a mere depiction of bird life. A peasant girl is on her way to the field for a hard day’s work.
Suddenly she hears the bird. Breton takes her upturned face, alive and athrill with the lilting beauty of the lark’s sweet melody, for the theme of his picture. Otherwise, this girl is just another peasant with a hard and work-a-day life. But for her, at this moment, everything is glorified by the “song of the lark” as it pours out its joy in a salute to the sky.
—Samuel J. Skevington
4639 Tree’s Strengthened Roots
Leslie Stokes, an English Baptist minister, once told the following parable:
Once upon a time there was a tree. It was a lovely-looking tree, shapely, strong, and stately. But appearances are not always to be trusted, and they were not in this case. For the tree knew inwardly that its massive strength was beginning to wane. When the wind was strong it had felt itself shaking ominously, and heard suspicious creaks. So, wisely, it took itself in hand. With much effort it grew another branch or two, and then looked stronger and safer than ever. But when the next gale blew, there was a terrific snapping of roots and, but for the support of a friendly neighbour, it would have been flat on the ground.
When the tree had recovered from the shock, it looked at its neighbour curiously. “Tell me,” it asked, “how is it that you have not only stood your ground, but are even able to help me, too?”
“Oh,” replied the neighbour, “that’s easy. When you were busy growing new branches, I was strengthening my roots.”
—Prairie Overcomer
4640 Feeding On God’s Word
The caterpillar of the cabbage butterfly feeds on cabbage, that of the alfalfa butterfly feeds on alfalfa, the monarch butterfly feeds exclusively on plants of the milkweed family and hence it is often known as the milkweed butterfly. Thus it is that a caterpillar can often be identified through that on which it is found feeding.
What would be your identification on the basis of what you feed on?
—Selected
4641 The Cicada’s Story
The frail larvae of the seventeen-year cicada, newly hatched from eggs, at once become diligent diggers. Only a fraction of an inch long, they nevertheless apply themselves so energetically that they soon vanish underground. Aside from stopping periodically to clean themselves off, much in the fashion of a cat washing its face with its paws, they burrow busily on to a depth of perhaps two feet. What an expenditure of time and energy just to disappear into the earth and stay there for nearly two decades! But when the insect reappears it has beautiful gauzy wings with which to fly.
4642 To Claim The Heights
I dined one night with Professor T. C. Chamberlain of the University of Chicago, and asked him, “What is the dividing line between Geology and Astronomy?” If I had been just a little more ignorant than I am, I might have supposed that the business of the geologist stopped with the surface of the earth; but I knew better than that.
He did not hesitate a minute. He knew just how far his science had property rights. He said that it ended at the point where the earth’s attraction equalled that of the sun; the point on the one side of which a body would fall to the earth and on the other side toward the sun. He said that point, which varied more or less with the three unequal axes of the “spheres of control” had a minumum radius of 620,000 miles.
I asked, “That is all settled, is it?”
He said, “The precise distances in miles varies, but the point when the earth’s attraction equals that of the sun is the line of division between the astronomers and the geologists.”
The geologist deals with a science that is of the earth, earthy and of the rocks, rocky. His business is strictly underfoot. And yet when you tell him to keep his feet on the earth, here he is demanding 620,000 miles up in the air as belonging also to his science.
If the geologist whose science sends him around with a hammer knocking off pieces of rock, demands 620,000 miles of room above his head for his science, I shall not heed for a minute the advice of those who admonished me to keep always on the level of the ground. I will not saw off my vision on the level of my eyes. … I am a child of earth, but I am also a child of God. … For all worlds belong to God; and if God is my Father, what is God’s is mine.
—E. R. Barton
4643 Epigram On Prayer (Devotions)
• A newly-married man found his wife sitting stockstill in the kitchen. She was following a recipe which said, “Don’t stir for fifteen minutes.”
• The field for a ship is the ocean, the field for the heart is reflection.
—Malay Proverb
• To the thousands of students who wrote to poet Carl Sandburg, asking him how to become a writer, Sandburg replied: “Solitude and prayer—then go on from there.”
—Long Live Columbus
• It is said that the sweetest side of any fruit or vegetable is the side which grows toward the sun.
—J. H. Bomberger