Streams in the Desert - Aug 26

It is not in me. (Job 28: 14)

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I remember saying one summer, “What I really need is a trip to the ocean.” So I went to the beach, but the ocean seemed to say, “It is not in me!” The ocean did not do for me what I thought it would. Then I said, “Perhaps the mountains will provide the rest I need.” I went to the mountains, and when I awoke the first morning, I gazed at the magnificent mountain I had so longed to see. But the sight did not satisfy, and the mountain said, “It is not in me!”

What I really needed was the deep ocean of God’s love, and the high mountains of His truth within me. His wisdom had depths and heights that neither the ocean nor the mountains could contain and that could not be compared with jewels, gold, or precious stones. Christ is wisdom and He is our deepest need. Our inner restlessness can only be pacified by the revelation of His eternal friendship and love for us.
~Margaret Bottome

My heart is there!
Where, on eternal hills, my loved one dwells
Among the lilies and asphodels;
Clad in the brightness of the Great White Throne,
Glad in the smile of Him who sits thereon,
The glory gilding all His wealth of hair
And making His immortal face more fair—
THERE IS MY TREASURE and my heart is there.
My heart is there!
With Him who made all earthly life so grand,
So fit to live, and yet to die His plan;
So mild, so great, so gentle and so brave,
So ready to forgive, so strong to save.
His fair, pure Spirit makes the Heavens more fair,
And that is where rises my longing prayer—
THERE IS MY TREASURE and my heart is there.
Favorite poem of the late Charles E. Cowman

You can never expect to keep an eagle in the forest. You might be able to gather a group of the most beautiful birds around him, provide a perch for him on the tallest pine, or enlist other birds to bring him the choicest of delicacies, but he will reject them all. He will spread his proud wings and, with his eye on an Alpine cliff, soar away to his own ancestral halls of rock, where storms and waterfalls make their natural music.

Our soul longs to soar as an eagle and will find rest with nothing short of the Rock of Ages. Its ancestral halls are the halls of heaven, made with the rock of the attributes of God. And the span of its majestic flight is eternity! “Lord, YOU have been our dwelling place throughout all generations” (Ps. 90: 1).
~J. R. Macduff

“My Home is God Himself”; Christ brought me there.
I placed myself within His mighty arms;
He took me up, and safe from all alarms
He bore me “where no foot but His has trod,”
Within the holiest at Home with God,
And had me dwell in Him, rejoicing there.
O Holy Place! O Home divinely fair!
And we, God’s little ones, abiding there.
“My Home is God Himself”; it was not so!
A long, long road I traveled night and day,
And sought to find within myself some way.
Nothing I did or felt could bring me near.
Self-effort failed, and I was filled with fear,
And then I found Christ was the only way,
That I must come to Him and in Him stay,
And God had told me so.
And now “my Home is God,” and sheltered there,
God meets the trials of my earthly life,
God compasses me round from storm and strife,
God takes the burden of my daily care.
O Wondrous Place! O Home divinely fair!
And I, God’s little one, safe hidden there.
Lord, as I dwell in You and You in me,
So make me dead to everything but Thee;
That as I rest within my Home most fair,
My soul may evermore and only see
My God in everything and everywhere;
My Home is God.
~author unknown

Reference

Cowman, L. B. E.; Reimann, Jim (2008-09-09). Streams in the Desert: 366 Daily Devotional Readings (pp. 327-328). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

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