The Confident Hope

Over the years, each time we have seen new attacks upon the name of Christ. I have drawn much comfort from an essay by the noted English writer F. W. Boreham. It is beautifully titled "The Candle and the Bird". Boreham makes the comment that God's presence is more analogous to a bird than it is to a candle. When a candle is extinguished, the light goes out. But when a bird is driven away, it only leaves to sing on another bough.

Even as England was becoming barren of a godly influence, the Moravians were raised up in Germany. From that movement missionaries were sent to the ends of the globe. But the Moravian movement began to wane. Had the light been extinguished?? No, the bird was singing on a different bough. Later in the century it was William Carey who set foot in India on the very day that the cross was being burned in France. While Volraire and hostile philosophers had done their work and Europe was threatening slaughter against gospel, William Carey, with a Bible in one hand and the annals of Moravian Mission in the other, was going to touch the heart of India. And as Scotland saw its heros fade, suddenly the voice of Charles Haddon Spurgeon rang out from London to thousands at home and abroad.

No, the light is never extinguished. As a bird, it has sung its song from different boughs. I am convinced that as dark as it may seem to us, there are strains of a melody beginning. The Lord of history may well be tuning His instruments as never before. Let us not look at the dark side. The bird is singing its song. But the melody must first be sung in each of our hearts. The philosopher may debate. The skeptic may scoff. Experience may be deceptive. But the Word of God abides forever, and that Word has shone upon the face of our Lord Jesus Christ.

....while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light,
In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright!!