Thursday, June 03, 2010

When Christ Encounters the Soul

Let any Christian think of going out into the world with the ultimate loneliness of his spirit for ever vanquished because Christ is with him; of facing life in the assurance that henceforth not for a moment does he walk unaided and alone!

Think of the inner peace it would mean - its effect on frayed nerves and harassed brain and daunted spirit. We are apt in these days to be besieged by life's unbearable enigmas and battered by its frightening responsibilities. We feel like Peter when he climbed down out of the boat to go to Jesus, and found himself caught in the swirl of the angry waves. We tell ourselves it is absurd that we should even attempt to be Christ's witnesses in a world like this and with a nature like our own: for "who is sufficient for these things?" And then, across our hectic fever falls the voice of calm: "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end"; and we know that, whatever happens, He is quite certain to be there. This is the way to peace, and to the consciousness of adequate resources. For it is no weak Christ with whom we have to do, but a Christ of power - stronger than the stress of life, stronger than the tyrant sins that seeks to smash us, stronger in the end than death itself.
A Faith to Proclaim. James S. Stewart. Hodder & Stoughton, London. 1953

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