BITS and PIECES
270th Edition – November 23, 2025
A random collection of news and views compiled by Frank McClelland for the Toronto Free Presbyterian Church.
SMILING SAINTS
“Happy art thou, O Israel: who is like unto thee, O people saved by the Lord!” [Deuteronomy 33:29]
Are we enjoying this happiness today? No people on earth have reason to be as happy than the blood-washed saints. The happiness of the world is shallow and temporary. Ours is deep and permanent. Yet all too often we become so engrossed in the concerns of this world that we lose the smile of happy contentment in Christ.
If we have Christ, we are saved, and that alone should make us happy. We are justified by grace through faith in the merits of Christ. We are accepted by the Father in Christ. We can never be robbed of this full and free salvation. We are as sure of heaven as if we were already there.
Not only are we saved, but we are “saved by the Lord.” The eternal God has thought on us. He has loved us with an everlasting love. He has pledged Himself in all the fulness of His glorious attributes, to accomplish our eternal salvation.
Thus, He is our shield to defend us against every foe. He is our sword to cut through all opposition to our progress to heaven. This is the essence of true happiness.
The miserable masses of this world desperately need to see true, happy Christians living their Christianity to the full. Are we allowing some passing trouble to wipe the radiance of salvation from our faces?
How then can we ever convince the world that Christians are the only truly happy people on earth? Oh! Let us cry to the Lord for grace to live in the overflowing happiness of the Gospel. [Dr. Alan Cairns]
“If you have no joy in your
religion, there’s a leak in your
Christianity somewhere” [Billy Sunday]
“Happy is that people, whose God
is the Lord” [Psalm 144:15].
MADAME GUYON’S PRAYER
Jeanne Marie Guyon was a French Christian born in 1648. A Roman Catholic by birth, she was accused by the church of heresy and imprisoned from 1695 to 1703.
In prison, she penned this prayer poem. In spite of her unpleasant surroundings for eight long years, she was still able to praise the Lord – a lesson for all of us in trouble like Paul and Silas in the Philippian jail.
“He placed me in a little cage,
Away from gardens fair;
But I must sing the sweetest songs,
Because He placed me there.
Not beat my wings against the gage
If it is my Maker’s will;
But raise my voice to heaven’s gate
And sing the louder still”
A QUESTION FOR THE EVOLUTIONIST
Many people in the world today deny the existence of God and proclaim themselves to be atheists. If they are not openly atheistic, they live like it. They seem to be satisfied to accept the evolutionary theory despite the overwhelming evidence against it. Here is a question for them which they must face.
As Christians, we accept the Biblical record that Adam and Eve were our first parents and we are all descended from them.
The evolutionist, while not accepting the Genesis account of creation, must accept that humanity had to start somewhere. They usually point to some primordial thing crawling out of the sea.
Suppose they are right, and this whatever-it-is is standing on land. We can’t call it a creature because the evolutionist denies a Creator and His work. The question is, ‘what told it to procreate and how could it?’
The Christian has no trouble with this because not only did God create every living creature, but He gave the command, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth” [Genesis 1:28].
And this applies to all creatures, animal and vegetable. God alone is the author of life. Despite man’s strident effort to unlock the key to life, he has miserably failed. He has been able to assemble the constituent ingredients, but he has been unable to make life. Just another evolutionary failure.
