LIGHT
SHINETH!
BY C. A. J.
The winter has
been long. For many months the show has covered the ground; the black branches
of the trees have tossed in wintry breezes and the cold, still earth has
imprisoned the germs of plant and insect life.
But a change is
at hand! Already warm-colored sunrises fortell nature’s yearly resurrection.
Remembered joys of past spring and summer seasons lead us to expect this change
even before there are any signs of it.
How wonderful is the resurrection of nature! How strange that the cold and frozen earth should awake with the spring-time, and be again clothed in beauty and teeming with life.
But many who welcomed the happy spring-times of other years, and who, in the bloom of health, once marked with joyous thoughts the march of the seasons, now suffer pains and ills which they little dreamed would fall to their lot, and to them this gladsome spring-tide is darkened by a cloud. Many who are yet young have felt the terrible blight of sin and disease, and their lives are overshadowed by the gloom and chill of a seemingly endless winter.
Dear reader, how is it with you? Are you happy in the summer of life, or has part of your light gone out and bitter storms overtaken you? Oh, how well we know that throughout this land are many aching hearts, and many bodies racked with pain, while days and nights of suffering are slowly extinguishing many feebly-burning lights of hope.
Dear reader, have you sought long and in vain for deliverance from some yoke of bondage? It is the approach of the summer sun that breaks the bonds of winter, and has not God allowed some sun to shine which will melt away the snows of life’s winter, and make all things glad and new?
Yes, blessed be
God! There has arisen “The Sun of Righteousness…with healing in His wings.”-(Mal.
iv:2.) To the sinner it is the light of forgiveness; to the sick it is the
light of healing. Infinitely greater and more reviling is the sun of
Righteousness to the heart of man, than is nature’s sun to the frozen earth.
Let us open our hearts that He may shine therein.
“To them which was sat in the region and shadow of death, light is sprung up.”-(Mal. iv:16.)
Jesus said, I am
the light of the world; he that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness but
shall have the light of life.”-(St. John viii:12.)
“Come ye and let us walk in the light of the Lord.”-Isa. ii:5.
