the Fourth Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Bowen's Daily Meditations
"Unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise." - Malachi 4:2.
Unto them that stand in awe of God and are conversant with the divine perfections, the Sun of righteousness makes haste to arise. There has been a fulfilling of this truth ever since the day of Pentecost. To one individual here, to an other there, it is given to behold his rising. Here is one that has been enabled to look upon Christ as the sacrifice for sin, to approach God through him, and to rejoice in the goodly prospects opening up before him. But soon he becomes conscious, of a great and growing need. He is not satisfied with what he has seen of Christ. The very word of God excites in him conceptions of a walk with Christ, glorious, elevating, soul-satisfying, beyond anything that he has experienced. It seems to him that the world grows darker every day. He once rejoiced in the day-star and in the dawn, and thought the light amazing; but now he is consumed with longings to be hold the bright manifestation of Christ to his soul; and it seems as though midnight had come again. At length in some happy hour, the scales fall from his eyes; the word of God becomes luminous like the very vestments of Christ transfigured; and instead of finding himself alone in the world, he finds himself in intimate alliance with a Being whose glory fills the heavens. The whole world is now to him enlightened. His sun is arisen. All the works of nature are seen as they never were before. In a particular language that others can not understand, the heavens declare to him the glory of God. The sun that pursues its course through the skies is commissioned to remind him that God is love, and that God is his.
He goes far in the strength of this joy. But at length he discovers that Christ has laid the foundations of his new nature very deep; and that it is impossible for him to be conclusively satisfied with any private joy. He is so made like unto Christ that he cannot but look with longings as intense as he ever knew, for that appearance of the Lord in his unlimited glory, which will be the signal of the complete redemption of the Church, as well as of the creation that now groaneth and travaileth in pain.
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