All the Days, He is With Me

The path in front of me may be full of flowers or full of thorns; or, as is more probable, flower and thorn may be mingled together.  The sky may be light or dark.  The weather may be bleakest winter or glorious summer.  But I go safely and happily, if the Lord Christ, Who can and will supply my every want, is with me all the days.

Some of the days will be days of discipline, of the pruning knife and the cleansing fire.  But when He is with me, the discipline is a benediction and not a curse.  T teaches me to grasp His strong right hand with a tighter hold, to pray more earnestly, to find heights and depths of meaning in the promises of God, to feel for all who are in tribulation.  Mind and heart and character are bettered by the endurance of affliction.

Often the days will be days of mercy.  And if He is with me, I shall have the observant eye which reaps unfailing joy from the study of His goodnesses and deliverances.  They will revive and deepen my gratitude, so that, after each fresh kindness, I shall sing a new song, realizing that the customary forms and the usual hymns are insufficient to utter the emotions of my soul.  I shall move through a land fertile and fair.

Many of the days, too, will be days of monotony.  They must be spent in little things—household labours, common anxieties, unnoticed toil.  I may long for an experience more striking and romantic.  But when He is with me, I know that He makes my life like his own.; the blessed life He lived among carpenter’s tools and village streets and peasant people.  The drudgery is a love message.  It is Jesus Christ in disguise.

Almost every day will be a day of temptation.  In the home, in the business, in company, in loneliness, I shall encounter the press of the storm.  But let my Lord be with me, and temptation shall but reveal the closeness and blessedness of the tie.  It will give Him opportunity to gain numberless victories.  It will be an instrument He uses to impart more maturity to my faith, more courage, more patience, more trust.

All the days He is with me, to the end, and through the end, and beyond the end for ever and ever. Whether I live, therefore, or whether I die, I am His and He is mine.

--Alexander Smellie,  In The Secret Place

 the gatehouse at Sir Walter Scott's home, Scotland

Lausanne, Switzerland