Christ, our Savior
If you take a cluster of flowers just as they are, with the dew upon them, how exquisite they are! But you tarnish them by just so much as you meddle with them. Every one who dissects a flower must make up his mind to lose it.
That sweetest flower of heaven, from which exhales perfume forever and forever; that dearest and noblest conception that the human imagination ever gathered out of father and mother, out of leader and benefactor, out of shepherd and protector, out of companion and brother and friend; all that ever was gracious in government—these various elements rising together, are an interpretation, in a kind of large and vague way, to the imagination, and through the imagination to the heart, that there is, at the center of universal authority toward which we are going, One who cares for us; One who bears our burdens; One who guides our career; One who hears our cry; and One, though He does not interpret Himself to us, who will at last make it plain that all things work together for the good of those that have trusted in Him.
Oh, my brothers, we are not far from the end of our journey. It matters very little what this world and time have for us. The other world is near to us, and it matters everything how we shall land there. We have our burdens, our crosses, our poignant sorrows, sickness, and death, embarrassments, bankruptcy, trials, and if not outward scourgings yet inward scourgings. We are not exempt from the great lot of mankind; and we go crying often with prone heads. Is it a comfort for you to know that there is a God who thinks of you? to know that there is One who is crying out in the silence, if you could only by your spiritual hearing listen, saying, “Come boldly to the throne of grace, and obtain mercy and help in time of need”?
O throne of iron, from which have been launched terrible lightnings and thunders that have daunted men! O throne of crystal, that has coldly thrown out beams upon the intellect of mankind! O throne of mystery, around about which have been clouds and darkness! O throne of Grace, where He sits regnant who was my brother, who has tasted of my lot, who knows my trouble, my sorrow, my yearning and longing for immortality! O Jesus, crowned, not for Thine own glory, but with power of love for the emancipation of all struggling spirits!—Thou are my God—my God!
—Henry Ward Beecher.
Alternate Reading: Acts 10: 23-43.