the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Bowen's Daily Meditations
" The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit." - Psalms 34:18.
Here again, the parallelism tells us something. He is nigh to save. His presence is salvation. Their misery is not nearer to them than their deliverer. To their broken heart, the whole universe seems broken; to their desolate spirit, all creation seems desolate. Crushed beneath a sense of unworthiness, forlornness, helplessness, they dare not lift up their eyes to heaven, and they know that it is useless to lift them to anything less than heaven. Irremediable sorrow seems their portion. But the Lord hasteneth to the place where they sit solitary. He does not announce his coming by angelic precursors; he does not descend on a bright cloud; no visible glory, no audible sound attests his presence. But the eye of the broken-hearted sinner falls upon the eighteenth verse of the thirty-fourth Psalm, and beholds there the intimation of God’s presence. The earthquake of the heart has opened a way for faith; and faith has opened a way for God. Formerly this word would have seemed like an engaging falsehood, a poetical fiction; nothing less than a hand of flame tracing the announcement in letters of fire upon the wall would have induced the recognition of such a truth. But faith lets God be true; and places him also among those whose words are to be believed. And if the Lord is nigh, then is all good nigh. When the Lord was with the first disciples, lacked they any thing? All our lost treasures are found again in him. All our bankrupt powers are found perfected in him. In his presence is fulness of joy.
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