I Love The Night

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  “It was a glorious night. The moon had sunk, and left the quiet earth alone with the stars. It seemed as if, in the silence and the hush, while we her children slept, they were talking with her, their sister — conversing of mighty mysteries in voices too vast and deep for childish human ears to catch the sound. They awe us, these strange stars, so cold, so clear. We are as children whose small feet have strayed into some dim-lit temple of the god they have been taught to worship but know not; and, standing where the echoing dome spans the long vista of the shadowy light, glance up, half hoping, half afraid to see some awful vision hovering there. And yet it seems so full of comfort and of strength, the night. In its great presence, our small sorrows creep away, ashamed. The day has been so full of fret and care, and our hearts have been so full of evil and of bitter thoughts, and the world has seemed so hard and wrong to us. Then Night, like some great loving mother, gently lays ...

Invasion

“The most effective prayer for a heart-hungry believer is an Old Testament petition found in the Psalms of David (Psalms 139:23-24):

'Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Try me, and know my thoughts;
And see if there be a way of grief in me,
And lead me in the way of eternity.'


I never fully understood the significance of this prayer until I heard the verse translated into the Scandinavian tongues. There the word “search” is rendered “ransack”. It takes little imagination to picture the thoroughness of a job of ransacking as compared to mere searching. Ransacking turns things upside down and brings to light things that are hidden or forgotten. In time of backsliding, the Spirit is quenched, and as life goes on the natural tendency is for a convicted person to forget the unpleasant episode. In conviction of sin, the debris of ordinary living is swept aside and the offending thing is brought to attention. Hence, if the believers are to avoid superficiality in confession, a thorough ransacking of the heart is necessary.”

J. Edwin Orr, Chapter 4, “The Searching of the Heart,” Full Surrender.

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