Reading: “Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.”—2 Corinthians 9:15

O eternal Lord, whose nature and whose name is love, I bless You that I am again invited into Your presence. What am I, that I should be permitted to speak to the infinite God! I might have been left through eternity a monument of Your righteous vengeance. I might have known You only as “the consuming fire.” But “Your ways are not as man’s ways”; mercy is remembered when wrath might have come upon me.

I desire to begin this day, blessing and praising You for “Your unspeakable gift,” Jesus the Son of Your love. Adored be your name, that the guilt of my sin, which the holiness of Your law could not permit otherwise to be cancelled, has to Him been transferred—that, as the scape-goat of His people, He has borne the mighty load into the land of oblivion, never more to be remembered. May I be enabled to show forth my lively gratitude to You for this wondrous token of Your Love, not only by lip homage, but by heart and life devotion. Sanctify and seal me in body, soul and spirit; and present me at last “faultless before the presence of Your glory with exceeding joy.”

O my God, I rejoice to know that my interests for time and eternity are confided to Your keeping. Though often “wonderful in counsel,” You are ever “excellent in working.” You are “God only wise”—“righteous in all Your ways, and holy in all Your works.” I commit my way and my doings unto You whose mercy has saved me, Amen.