These words describe in vivid reality the coming time of blessing for poor scattered Israel, when the daughter of Zion, who now dwells, as it were, in dust, shall awake, and arise and shine, her light being come, and the glory of the Lord be risen upon her.
But they also describe morally and spiritually all that lies before us, as we by faith survey the coming, nearing day- dawn of the bright Morning Star, in contrast with the fading, falling shadows on our life of pilgrimage below.
As with the New Year opening upon us, we turn over a fresh leaf in the book of history, is it not well to challenge our hearts, and ask where this new date finds us, and what is really before us?
The Lord Jesus Christ is not only the Day-spring and Morning Star, but, blessed be His name, He is the Sun of the one eternal day, and the clearer and brighter He is before our hearts, the greater the ease with which we retire from all down here. All that is eternal and unfailing is on His side; all below and around us is in reality but sunset, the brightness and beauty are gradually but surely fading. If our poor eyes are turned there they are only on what is sinking below the horizon, but when they are fixed like the martyr Stephen on Jesus in the glory of God, how different it all is; then the outline, beautiful beyond all conception, of the eternal realities, unfolds itself before us.
There is one great and blessed fact which stands out to the eye of faith thus fixed on the nearing, heavenly sunrise: it is the blessed establishment of communication between the heart and its absent object. This too by the Holy Ghost, the heavenly messenger and glorifier of Jesus, who conveys to the soul the sense and comfort of His love and His blessed thoughts about us—thus are we really invigorated and revived, thus do the things above display themselves in all their own blessedness before us. We live then in His own sphere with Himself, in all the calm and rest of that blessed region of satisfied desire, and in the peace and power of it we are carried through the raging storms on our own side, superior through His grace to the watery waste around us, the heart already in the place where its treasure is, where the sun no more goes down, but where the everlasting light of His presence enfolds it around for ever.
May our hearts, dear readers, turn more than ever there during this new year; be it days and weeks and months, few or many, and may we be more intently, looking up to, as well as abiding in, Him who came and died and rose again, and sits at God’s right hand for us, and looking forward to that blessed moment when His shout shall be heard by all His own raised or changed, who shall follow Him into the Father’s house, and there share His heavenly bliss and joys, of which we sometimes sing, when we say: –
“There with unwearied gaze,
Our eyes on Him we’ll rest,
And satisfy with endless praise
A heart supremely blest.”