In the Morning

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 21, 1903

The morning is the time of preparation. Each fresh morning brings the opportunity for a fresh start. How the morning opens largely determines not only the character of the day’s work, but also its end. The coming of morning furnishes the outlook for the day. Nor is this all. The light of morning is peculiarly exact. It is cold and penetrating. The love that can stand the light of morning is a love indeed. Evening is always more or less fevered. The lengthening shadows, the artificial light, and a score of other things lend enchantment to many things that the morning shows up in all their reality. Many things that appear valued and precious in the evening can not stand the cold stare of the morning light.

One thing, however, is perennially the same. The “loving-kindness of God” is suited to all lights and all seasons. It can check the fevered scenes of evening, and flush with rosy warmth the cold gray of dawn. It is the loving-kindness of One to whom the darkness and the light are both alike. It is the ministering care of a shepherd who neither slumbers nor sleeps.

“Well begun is half done,” says the proverb, and a morning that awakens within us a consciousness of the divine loving-kindness is a fitting start for any day. Its warm love can transform the hardest duty, and its assurance of a kindness born of love and sustained by love makes every burden light. This assurance transforms all work into a service for our Beloved, and love ever makes work light, and even pain a joy.

So real and lasting is the loving-kindness of our God, that no morning dawns without it. It “prevents” the night watches, and the trusting soul can say, “When I awake, I am still with thee.” Doubt in this matter is an impossibility for the thoughtful heart. The very fact that morning comes proves the loving-kindness of God. We can neither bring it to pass nor hasten its coming. Each recurring day is a gift of God, telling us in no uncertain tones that he loves us with an everlasting love.

Let each recurring day, then, find us wrapped around with the loving-kindness of God. Let us gird it about our loins, let us bind it as frontlets between our eyes. Let us bind it as sandals on our feet, for this alone makes walking safe and easy.—Selected.