December 18
With Him on the Holy Mount
In the Hour of Silence"He was transfigured before them, and His face did shine as the sun."—Matthew 17:2.
THE experience is for the servant as well as for the Master.
There is a Transfiguration of standing and position. Believing in my Saviour, I have eternal life, and shall never come into the judgment. Once God's displeasure hung over me, like a brooding sky from which the lightning might flash at any moment. Now the cloud has passed, and the sun shines. When I am in Christ God is my Father and my Friend.
There is a Transfiguration of character and life. The hour now is—now is—when the dead hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear live. Renewed by Him, enlivened, ennobled, I am separated by spiritual and eternal worlds from my former estate. Once I was darkness, now I am light in my Lord. Once I was an enemy, now I am a happy child.
There is a Transfiguration of outlook and hope. The gloom lifts and vanishes from death, and from the world beyond death, when Christ is mine and I am His. Through His mercy and grace I shall come forth to the resurrection of glory and joy. One happy day, I shall behold His face in righteousness; one last consummate morning, I shall be satisfied when I awake with His likeness. The undecaying inheritance is mine.
Thus, in my Saviour and my Lord, I am given "spiritual right to travel through a region bright." "The world's winter is going, I hope," George Eliot wrote in one of her letters, "but my everlasting winter has set in." But in the Christian heart there should be no winter at all.