December 17

'The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad; and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.'--Isaiah 35:1.

THE desert blossoms, when Christ is in it, as the narcissus, the meadow-saffron, the rose.

There is a desert of separation from outward means of grace. I may be deprived of my Christian surroundings. I may have to travel far from the homeland and the sound of the Sabbath bells. But Jesus is the same under every sky. He continues to dwell with me by faith. And then the wilderness becomes a paradise.

There is a desert of trial. Perhaps I lose my substance. Perhaps I lose my health. Perhaps I lose my friend, the half of my own soul. How desolating the affliction is! How orphaned I am! But Jesus blesses me. He makes the fruits of new grace to spring in the soil of my heart. He makes the morning star to shine in the darkness of my night.

There is a desert of apparent disaster to the cause of God. The Church has its periods of adversity when all things seem against it. It loses the favour of the crowd. It walks through the arrowy sleet and hail. But Jesus teaches it to be more serious then, more patient, more devout, stronger in faith, richer in feeling, purer in aim.

There is a desert of death. To go out from the world which I know into the world which is mysterious and strange—how I shrink from it! But Jesus shows me, by His written Word and His Holy Spirit and His own experience, that death is the road to glory and the path to fruitfulness. The solitary place shall be glad.