Daily Devotionals

Music For the Soul

Devotional: August 10th

MIRACLES OF GRACE

It shall be to them a renown, in the day that I shall be glorified. - Ezekiel 39:13

The transformation of men is the great miracle and marvel of Christ’s power. "He shall come to be admired" - which word is employed in its old English signification, "to be wondered at" - "in all them that believe." So fair and lovely is He that He needs but to be recognised for what He is in order to be glorified. So great and stupendous are His operations in redeeming love that they need but to be beheld to be the object of wonder. " His name shall be called Wonderful." And wonderfully the energy of His redeeming and sanctifying grace shall then have wrought itself out to its legitimate end. There you get the crowning marvel of marvels, and the highest of miracles. He did wonderful works upon earth which we rightly call miraculous - things to be wondered at; but the highest of all His wonders is the wonder that takes such material as you and me, and by such a process and on such conditions, simply because we trust Him, evolves such marvellous forms of beauty and perfectness from us. " He is to be wondered at in all them that believe."

Such results from such material! Chemists tell us that the black bit of coal in your grate and the diamond on your finger are varying forms of the one substance. What about a power that shall take all the black coals in the world and transmute them into flashing diamonds, prismatic with the reflected light that comes from His face and made gems on His strong right hand? The universe shall wonder at such results from such material, at the process by which they were accomplished, wondering at the depth of His pity, revealed all the more pathetically now from the Great White Throne, which casts such a light on the Cross of Calvary; wondering at the long, weary path which He who is now declared to be the Judge humbled Himself to travel in the quest of these poor sinful souls whom He has thus redeemed and glorified. The miracle of miracles is redeeming love; and the high-water mark of Christ’s wonders is touched in this fact, that out of men He makes saints, and out of saints He makes perfect likenesses of Himself.

There will be spectators of this glory. To whomsoever in the whole universe Christ at that Great Day shall be manifested, to them, whoever they be, will His glory, in His glorified saints, be a revelation beyond what they have known before. " Every eye shall see Him." And whatsoever eyes look upon Him, then on His throne, they shall behold the attendant courtiers and the assessors of His judgment, and see in them the manifestation of His own lustrous light.

We need not speculate; it is better not to enter into details. But this, at least, is clear, that that solemn winding up of the long, mysterious, sad, blood and tear-stained history of man upon the earth is to be an object of interest and a higher revelation of God to other creatures than those that dwell upon the earth; and we may well believe that for that moment, at all events, the centre of the universe, which draws the thoughts of all thinking, and the eyes of all seeing, creatures to it shall be that valley of judgment wherein sits the Man Christ and judges men, and round Him the flashing reflectors of His glory in the person of His saints.