(A Poem Just as Needful Today) –from 1918 Word and Work

 

You say you are “busy this morning

In the maelstrom of family cares,

And husband must rush to the office,

So there isn’t a moment for prayers.”

Then the children are sent to the schoolroom

And the grind of the day thus begins,

With no word from God’s book to remember,

Nor the echo of strengthening hymns.

What wonder the burdens are heavy,

And the hours seem irksomely long;

What wonder that rash words are spoken,

And that life seems discordant and wrong!

And at even, discouraged and wearied,

You carelessly go to your rest,

Forgetting that Jesus is waiting

To pillow your head on his breast.

He longs for a word of thanksgiving,

And to hear your love spoken again;

He asks to review the day’s record,

And to cleanse it of blotches and stain.

But if you forget him so often,

Some time you may knock at his gate,

And, awaiting the summons to enter,

You may hear, “You are praying too late.”

So pause for a little each morning,

And again at the close of the day,

To talk with the Master who loves you

Remember, he taught us to pray.

— Christian Workers’ Magazine.

“Be ye therefore imitators of God as beloved children, and walk in love even as Christ also loved us.” (Eph. 5:1, 2). Let us who have received the abundance of God’s grace, stand fast in this heavenly freedom wherewith Christ has made us free, and let us not be entangled again in the yoke of bondage For many Christians, in their principle and attitude, still live under the law. But let us, circumcised in Christ Jesus (Deut. 30:6; Col. 2:11) love God with all our heart, and our neighbor as ourselves, and our brethren as Jesus has loved us. It is only so that we shall really obey— stedfastly, carefully, gladly doing the will of God from the heart.