BITS and PIECES
A random collection of news and views compiled by Frank McClelland for the Toronto Free Presbyterian Church.
234th Edition – March 16, 2025
THE MIRACLE OF DAYLIGHT
Every morning, we awaken to a fresh miracle – the miracle of daylight. In the night all is black and dark. No earthly beauty is visible. None of nature’s radiant colours can be seen, just the blackness of darkness for hour after hour.
Then, suddenly, the morning star appears. The shafts of daylight follow, sweeping over mountain and valley until the whole land is aglow with the light of a new day. What a transformation! The darkness gives way to green fields, sparking blue waters, and a host of dazzling colours.
There’s a spiritual lesson for us in the dawning of a new day. The Bible teaches that we are all sinners in God’s sight. The Lord said, “men love darkness … because their deeds are evil” [John 3:19] and He said, “how great is that darkness,” [Mathew 6:23] so great that we cannot see the hideousness of our sin, or the beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ. Without Christ all is darkness.
But what a message of hope Jesus brings. He said “I am the Light of the world” [John 8:12]. He is the “Morning Star” [Revelation 22:16]. He is also the “Sun of Righteousness” [Malachi 4:2].
If you take Jesus as your Saviour your life will be flooded with Gospel light. What a transformation you will experience, and you will know what the hymn-writer meant when he said, “Heaven above is softer blue, Earth around is sweeter green: Something lives in every hue, Christless eyes have never seen.”
If you are walking in spiritual darkness, Jesus Christ is the Saviour you need.
“THE HOUR IS COME”
God lives in the ‘eternal now.’ However, for us time is an endless flowing stream that sweeps us along with it. This year we must enter into deeper and faster flowing waters than before. Time will not stand still even for a moment. Every moment must be coloured with either temptation or victory.
For our Lord Jesus time was of the utmost importance. Having received a human body, He was influenced by time. He was working to the clock. For Him, as all other men, there was a time to be born and a time to die.
It was for the hour of His death He set His own timepiece. Seven times in John’s Gospel we read of that ‘hour.” He told His mother, “mine hour is not yet come” [John 2:4]. He was looking forward to the hour that He should be glorified in His death.
That has been called the world’s darkest hour, when the Saviour hung upon the cross. Yet, for God and His Son it was the hour of their glorification. Speaking of His forthcoming death the Lord Jesus prayed to the Father, “Father the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also my glorify Thee” [John 17:1].
The Scottish reformer, John Knox, had John chapter 17 read to him everyday during his last illness and, in the closing scene, consoled and animated him in the final conflict. In life he had sought to glorify the Son, now in death he could find peace in the words of his Saviour, “I have glorified Thee on the earth: I have finished the work which Thou hast given me to do” [John. 17:4].
Time is rolling on yet we are immortal until our work is done. Let this prayer of our Lord be our banner unfurled against the breezes of every opposition: “Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that Thy Son may glorify thee.” [Rev. Ian Goligher].
A MOTHER’S COMFORT
“As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you” [Isaiah 66:13]
A mother’s comfort! How she enters into her child’s grief. Of all comforters, the child loves best his mother, and even full-grown men have found it so.
Does Jehovah condescend to act the mother’s part? This is goodness indeed. He is a Father; but will He be as a mother also? When God Himself becomes “the Comforter” no anguish can long abide. He will not despise us for our tears; our mother did not.
We will not try to bear our grief alone. Let us begin the day with our loving God, and wherefore should we not finish it in the same company, since mothers weary not of their children? [From Spurgeon’s Chequebook].
