Reading: “Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone.” —Isaiah 6:5
O God, You are “the high and lofty One who inhabits eternity.” There is no being truly great but You. All other excellence and glory is derived; Yours is intrinsic. All else is finite; Yours is infinite. The burning seraph nearest Your throne is the humblest of all Your creatures because he gets the nearest view of the majesty of Your glory.
Lord, fill my soul this morning with suitable views of Your greatness, and a humbling estimate of my own nothingness. I would lie low at Your feet in wonder and amazement that dust and ashes should be permitted to approach that being whom angels worship with folded wings and in whose sight the very “heavens are not clean.” Repress every proud, self-glorifying imagination.
Let me feel in light of Your greatness that I cannot abase myself enough in Your presence. “Lord, I am vile; what can I answer You?” My best thoughts, how polluted! My best services, how imperfect! My best affections, how lukewarm! My best prayers, how cold! My best hours, were I judged by them, how would I be condemned!
I desire to take refuge at the cross of a crucified Saviour. Here, Lord, give me that grace You have promised to the lowly. Self-renouncing and sin-renouncing, I would seek to be exalted only in Jesus, crying out, “God be merciful to me a sinner!” In broken-heartedness of soul I mourn the past. Distrustful of the future, I look only to You.
Adapted from the Rev. John McDuff, D.D., The Morning Watches, 1852.
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