Difference between revisions of "MEDITATION XXIII."
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Latest revision as of 17:11, 5 January 2020
MEDITATION XXIII.
IMPERFECT ATTAINMENTS.
How pitiful are our highest attainments in this imperfect state! But, O how beautiful is it for the child of grace to grow daily in grace, and in the knowledge of God to rise step by step, until at length complete in Him who is the pattern of perfection! Let it be my continual struggle, then, that my grace, like the shining light, may shine more and more until the perfect day of glory. I can never get so near to God—but there still remains, and through eternity will remain, a distance, to be destroyed by approaching yet more near. My attainments can never be so high—but there remains something attainable, which I have not yet attained. "It's not that I have already reached this goal or have already become perfect. But I keep pursuing it, hoping somehow to embrace it just as I have been embraced by Christ Jesus. Brothers, I do not consider myself to have embraced it. But this one thing I do: Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I keep pursuing the goal to win the prize of God's heavenly call in Christ Jesus." If this was the confession of the great apostle, what must I say, who am but just setting my head through the shadows of the night, and peeping into the dawning of divine things?
Hence let me press vigorously towards perfection, and not be contented with my present attainments. Let me daily be drawing more near to him, until, Enoch-like, I walk with God, and live with him in heaven. Let me daily sit at wisdom's door, and stand at the gate of paradise, that, since as yet I cannot enter in, I may send in my faith to view the fields, the land of my Beloved, and returning, bring me the substance of the excellencies hoped for, the evidence of the glorious things not seen. Let me walk in the mount of God, with him whose form is like the Son of God. Let the desire of my soul be to your name, and the remembrance of you.
Let an uninterrupted communication be broken up between the fountain of life and my soul, that I may bear no more the reproach of barrenness. And from that river of life that springs from the throne of God, and of the Lamb, let me daily drink, that I may thirst no more after the vanities of time. Let me live quite above the world, above its pleasures, and above its pains, disdain its flatteries, and despise its frowns. Let grace grow from one degree unto another, until, at last, O desirable perfection! it grows to glory. Let me hold you, and not let you go, until you bless me, in perfecting my attainments, and crowning my happiness with the full unclouded vision, and uninterrupted communion with Jehovah, and the Lamb, forever more! "But whoever drinks the water that I will give him will never become thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life."