the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Our Daily Homily - Volume 2
Psalms 60:1—Oh, restore us again! (R.V.)
Cast off! There is a sense in which that can never be. God will not cast off from salvation any soul of man that has sheltered under the covert of his Almighty wings. He may withdraw the sensible enjoyment and realization of his presence; but He cannot cast off for ever, in the sense of consigning any fugitive to his foes or to the fate he dreads.
And yet there is a sense in which we are cast off, when we have been unbelieving and disobedient. Allowed to take our own way, that we may learn its bitterness; permitted to hunger and thirst, that we may know how evil a thing it is to seek our supreme good anywhere else than in God; given over to the tender mercies of the gods we have chosen, that we may be taught their helplessness. It was thus that God cast off his people. He showed them hard things, and allowed them to reap as they had sown.
But now they cry for restoration. Put us back, they say, into the old place; be to us what Thou wert, and make us to Thee as we were. Restore us again. He did it for Peter, putting him back to the front place in the Apostolic band; for Mark, allowing him, who had gone back in his first missionary journey, to write a Gospel; for Cranmer and many more, who in the first burst of fiery trial shrank back, but to whom He gave more grace. Believe in the restoring grace of Christ, who not only forgives, but puts back the penitent and believing soul where it was before it fell away. Indeed, it has been suggested that the prodigal fares better on his return than those who do not go astray. It is not really so. But there is much music and song when the lost is found and the dead lives.
