Morning, March 16, edited from Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening

“For I am a stranger with You.” — Psalm 39:12

Yes, O Lord, with you, but not to you. Your grace has successfully removed all my natural alienation from you,  and now, in fellowship with yourself, I walk through this sinful world as a sojourner in a foreign country. You are a stranger in your own world. Man forgets you, dishonors you, sets up new laws and alien customs, and knows you not. When your dear Son came to his own, his own received him not. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. Never was so speckled a bird foreign among the occupants of any land as your beloved Son was among his mother’s brethren. It is no marvel, then, if I — who live the life of Jesus — should be unknown and a stranger here below. Lord, I would not be a citizen where Jesus was an alien. His pierced hand has loosened the cords which once bound my soul to earth, and now I find myself a stranger in the land. My speech seems an outlandish tongue to these Babylonians among whom I dwell, my manners are curious, and my actions are strange. A Tartar transported from the past would be more at home in Cheapside, London, than I could ever be in the hangouts of sinners. But here is the delight of my lot: I share being a stranger with you. You are my fellow-sufferer, my fellow-sojourner. Oh, what joy to wander in such blessed company! My heart burns within me by the way when you speak to me, and though I be a sojourner, I am far more blessed than those who sit on thrones, and far more at home than those who dwell in their paneled houses.

“To me remains nor place, nor time:

My country is in every clime;

I can be calm and free from care

On any shore, since God is there.

While place we seek, or place we shun,

The soul finds happiness in none:

But with a God to guide our way,

‘Tis equal joy to go or stay.”