Daily Devotionals

Bowen's Daily Meditations

Devotional: June 30th

"All are yours, and ye are Christ’s." - 1 Corinthians 3:23.

The way to possess unlimited treasure is to give yourself away. How little the philosophers who sought by alchemy to obtain the art of transmuting mean things to precious, - how little did they dream that the art of acquiring worlds of wealth had been long before divulged, and that it consisted simply in giving one’s self away to Christ. Men are victims of the unhappy delusion that their own self is a nucleus, a beginning of wealth, around which they must wrap acquisition after acquisition, till they have greatly magnified themselves. In this way, however, they are only heaping up riches for the last day, only fattening themselves for the slaughter. Let a man give himself, and all belonging to himself, to Christ; feeling at the same time that he is only giving what he had never any right to withhold, what it were the most audacious usurpation to think for a moment of withholding; let him rejoice to know Christ as the Lord of all; and in that very hour he will find himself possessor of all. All things were made for Him, it is said; that is, for Christ; and if for Christ, then for the believer; for the two are joint-heirs.

All tilings are yours; therefore all the arrangements of God are yours. In none of the arrangements of God is your happiness overlooked. The gold and silver of this world are found abundantly in the hands of others, not at all in yours; - well, this is one of those arrangements that contemplate your good. Worldly wealth does not belong to those who seem to have it; but to those who get the good of it. There are a thousand little conveniences of life which you could not enjoy ere not other men rich enough to embark in enterprises. They themselves perhaps receive great damage from the wealth that they hold during the brief term of life; but your profit from it all is guaranteed in heaven. All things are yours; the prosperity of others, your own adversity, sickness, humiliation, losses, the elements, earth, heaven, time, eternity.

Your chief joy is, that you are Christ’s; and you rejoice that all things are yours, chiefly because they will serve to make you a less unworthy possession to Christ. Holiness is yours; the image of God; spiritual, moral, and physical perfection; a crown of glory that fadeth not away; magnificent and inconceivable destinies. Viewing yourself as the property of Christ, you rejoice for his sake that this wondrous wealth is to roll in upon you, and that the mean stone is to be converted into a pearl of great price.