September 5

Christ where we live and work

“Surely the righteous shall give thanks unto thy name: the upright shall dwell in thy presence” (Psa. 140:13).
“One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life” (Psa. 27:4).

“One thing have I desired, that will I seek after; that I”—in my study; I, in my shop; I, in my parlor, kitchen, or nursery; I, in my studio; I, in my lecture-hall—“may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.” In our “Father’s house are many mansions.” The room that we spend most of our lives in, each of us at our tasks or our worktables, may be in our Father’s house, too; and it is only we that can secure that it shall be.


The Psalmist longed to break down the distinction between sacred and secular; to consecrate work, of whatever sort it was. He had learned what so many of us need to learn far more thoroughly, that if our religion does not drive the wheels of our daily business, it is of little use; and that if the field in which our religion has power to control and impel is not that of the trivialities and secularities of our ordinary life, there is no field for it at all.
And if we have, in our lives, things over which we cannot make the sign of the cross, the sooner we get rid of them the better. If there is anything in our daily work, or in our characters, about which we are doubtful, here is a good test: does it seem to check our continual communion with God, as a ligature round the wrist might do the continual flow of the blood, or does it help us to realize His presence? If the former, let us have no more to do with it; if the latter, let us seek to increase it.
—Alexander Maclaren.

Lord try us, lest our holy creed
We hold in word but not in deed;
Or hold mere forms of godliness
Without a Christlike holiness.

Lord halt us, lest with bigot tread
We live a name and yet are dead
Or lest in fighting error’s pen
We smirch, not heresies, but men.

Lord keep us true, but ever kind,
With Thine own gentleness of mind;
With Thine own wisdom from above,
Whose strongest argument is love.

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