Evening, February 1, edited from Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening

“Your love to me was … wonderful.” — 2 Samuel 1:26

Come, dear readers, let each one of us speak for himself of the wonderful love, not of Jonathan, but of Jesus. We will not relate what we have been told, but the things of the love of Christ which we have tasted and handled. Your love to me, O Jesus, was wonderful when I was a stranger wandering far from you, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind. Your love restrained me from committing the sin which results in death, and withheld me from self-destruction. Your love held back the axe when Justice said, “Cut it down! Why should it take up space in the ground?” Your love drew me into the wilderness, stripped me there, and made me feel the guilt of my sin, and the burden of my iniquity. Your love spoke to comfort me when, I was very dismayed — “Come to me, and I will give you rest.” Oh, how matchless your love was when, in a moment, you washed my sins away, and made my polluted soul, which was crimson with the blood of my birth, and black with the grime of my transgressions, to be white as the driven snow, and pure as the finest wool. How you did commend your love to me when you whispered in my ears, “I am yours and you are mine.” Kind were those inflections when you said, “The Father himself loves you.” And sweet the moments, passing sweet, when you declared to me “the love of the Spirit.” Never shall my soul forget those halls of fellowship where you unveiled yourself to me. Did not Moses have his cleft in the rock, where he saw the royal train, and the back of his God? We, too, have had our clefts in the rock, where we have seen the full splendor of the Godhead in the person of Christ. Did David remember the tracks of the wild goat, the land of Jordan and the mountains of Hermon? We, too, can remember spots dear to memory, equal to these in blessedness. Precious Lord Jesus, give us a fresh drink of your wondrous love to begin the month with. Amen.