Reading: “But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent.” —Luke 24:29
Blessed Jesus, “abide with me” for the day is “far spent.” Let me walk with You in newness of life. May I breathe Your spirit of holy submission, of cheerful obedience, of patience under injuries. May I not repine at bearing the cross so meekly borne for me; nor murmur at my trials when I think of Yours. May I be enabled to make every aspect of Your spotless character my daily study, so as gradually to be transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, looking forward to that blessed time when I shall see You without one stain of remaining sin to dim the contemplation and when I shall be permitted to bathe in the ocean of Your eternal love.
I thank You for the mercies of the past night. Allow me to consider every new day a fresh gift of Your dying grace, to regard all its hours as redeemed hours, every moment as “bought with a price.” May these days, and hours, and moments, thus stamped with the cross, be consecrated more than ever to Your praise.
Again I beseech You, “abide with me.” “Where You go I will go, and where You dwell I will dwell.” Abide with me from morning to evening, and from evening to morning again. “Without You I cannot live”; “without You I dare not die.” Living or dying, Lord, I would seek to be Yours. Forgive all my many sins, and when the feeble glimpses of a feeble love on earth are at an end, bring me at last to enjoy brighter views of You in glory everlasting. Amen.
Adapted from the Rev. John McDuff, D.D., The Morning Watches, 1852.
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