Abide With Me

A Shadow Then Illumination

"I know that I, a poor girl, married a poor man," returned Aunt Jane. "And he took me to a home in which his love was my sole luxury, and mine my only refining influence. And how gladly I would go back with him this day, leaving behind me all that his long years of labor have won for me, into that homely home, if I might but go there with him in poverty instead of weeping for him amid this wealth. Oh! men make such mistakes! such fearful remediless mistakes!They sacrifice the lives on which other lives hang under the delusion that when they are gone money can satisfy the aching, empty hearts they leave behind them."

This was the first time she had ever made the slightest allusion to a sorrow that had cast first a great shadow and then a great illumination upon her life. An illumination; for a shadow implies a sun. ~ From Aunt Jane's Hero,

Full Possession of Christ

For you I desire but one thing--a full possession of Christ. Let us turn away our eyes from everything that does not directly exalt Him in our affections; we are poor without Him, no matter what our worldly advantages are; rich with Him when stripped of all besides. ~ Letter to Mrs. Leonard, April 5, 1869

[Love that--"full possession of Christ."]

Be blessed this Lord's Day and every day by the beauty of our Savior.