May 25

"Come."—Matthew 25:34.

CHRIST'S favourite word is "Come." Deute pros Me—He keeps calling it over and over: Hither to Me; Come, all ye that labour, and I will give you rest; "you've gone astray, out of your way, come home again! come home again!"

There is the "Come" of Time. Here and now He addresses it to me. I hear it in the invitations of His gospel, in the events of His providence, in the appeals of His Spirit. When I respond to it, it is the hour of my conversion, it is the turning-point in my history, it is my entrance into a world of light and life and love of which I had no conception before. He draws me and I follow on, "charmed to confess the voice divine." There is no music like the music of Christ's Come. It enthrals the ear. It ministers to the mind diseased. It plucks the rooted sorrow from the memory. It makes me a new creation.

And by and by there is the "Come" of Eternity. He wants to have His friends still closer to Him; He bids them enter His joy and sit down on His throne. It is the satisfaction of His own heart's yearning love. At length those whom the Father has given Him are with Him where He is, to behold His glory. And it is the coronation of their waiting and expectant souls. Their winter is over and gone; their everlasting summer has begun. No more miry ways for them, and no more bitter tears. "Turtle calleth turtle in heaven's May."

The second "Come" will only fall on my hearing and my heart, if I have said Yes to the first. It is in my power, let me remember, to say that momentous Yes. What Christ offers, it is my part to welcome. What He gives, it is my part to receive.