The Return of Sunday Spurgeon

“All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change comes.” (Job 14:14)

You will observe, also, dear Friends, that Job very wisely speaks of the “days” of our appointed time. It is a prudent thing to forbear the burden of life as a whole and learn to bear it in the parcels into which Providence has divided it. Let us live as life comes, namely, by the day. Our God does not trust us with so much life as a month at once—we live as the clock ticks—a second at a time. Is not that a wiser method of living rather than to perplex our heads by living by the month, or by the year? You have no promise for the year—the Word of Mercy runs, “As your days your strength shall be.” You are not commanded to pray for supplies by the year, but, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

Said a good man to me the other day who had many troubles, who has borne them manfully to my knowledge, for these 15 or 20 years, when I asked him how his patience had held out—“Ah,” he said, “I said to my afflicted wife the other day when the coals came in, ‘It takes several big fellows to bring in the sacks, but yet our little kitchen maid, Mary, has brought the whole ton up from the cellar into our parlor. But she has done it a scuttle-full at a time. She has as surely moved those tons of coal as ever did the wagons when they brought them in, but she has moved them little by little, and done it easily.’ ”

This is how to bear the troubles of life—a day’s portion at a time. Wave by wave our trials come and let us breast them one by one and not attempt to buffet the whole ocean’s billows at once. Let us stand as the brave old Spartan did, in the Thermopylae of the day, and fight the Persians as they come on one by one. Thus shall we keep our adversities at bay and overcome them as they advance in single file. But let us not venture into the plain amidst the innumerable hordes of Persians or we shall speedily be swallowed up and our faith and patience will be overcome.