I HAVE GONE ASTRAY by T. E. Bowen

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Sep 21, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 37.

"I HAVE GONE ASTRAY."

By T. E. Bowen

BY T. E. BOWEN.

As David viewed the perfectness of God and His wonderful law, which is also perfect, being the transcript of its Author’s perfect character, he bursts forth with the exclamation concerning himself, "I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek Thy servant; for I do not forget Thy commandments." Ps. 119: 176. With the psalmist, we all have strayed like lost sheep. Thinking some other path better, or seeming not content with the quiet of the fold, we have wandered away, and in the thicket of sin become bewildered and lost.

The comparison is an apt one. "Astray like a lost sheep." When a sheep gets lost, it is difficult to find a more helpless creature. Perfectly bewildered, it is as liable to go in the opposite direction from that it should go, as to go toward its home. Then it keeps up a continual bleating, calling attention to itself that it is lost, and thus only increasing its own danger by making of itself an easy prey for some lurking foe thirsting for its life-blood. And, further, a sheep has no means of self-defense.

Thus helpless and lost is every soul outside of the fold—Jesus Christ. The first ray of hope is found in the realization by the lost one that he is lost. Sensing this terrible fact, he is then ready to call out for help. He is ready then to put up the earnest plea toward heaven, "Seek Thy servant." To Him who has known all the time the wretched, lost condition, this cry for help comes like sweetest music. "Does God hear?" queries some trembling heart. "Will He care for me?" Ah! dear soul, He that has been longing after thee with longings only faintly illustrated by the yearnings of a precious, faithful mother over the wandering son of her love, doubt not but that He hears your first faint cry for help. In His wisdom He may test you. He may prove for your own good the sincerity and earnestness of your desire to be delivered, but be assured He hears you, and will deliver you if you but yield yourself to Him.

How may one know He hears, and will provide deliverance? In the thicket of sin we have simply lost the path of God’s commandments. Disobedience perhaps at one time seemed a trifling matter. But when you awake to the realization that you are left to perish by yourself, alone, then disobedience does not seem so sweet, and you long for the right way. Then, like David, you "do not forget" God’s commandments. If you do not forget them, they are in your mind, you remember them. Perhaps those dear mother lips that taught you these blessed commandments have been stilled in death. Anyhow, you remember these words of life, and, through these, that gentle Hand that for your sake was pierced by the thorns, guides you tenderly back to His fold.

Reader, have you strayed away from Christ in the hope of enjoying the "pleasures of sin for a season"? Have you realized all that for which you have sought? Are you beginning to sense the bitter thought that you are lost? Already your feet may be upon the very brink

of certain death—yes, that awful chasm of eternal death—and would it not be well to pause a moment and listen for the loving call of One who loves you so much that "He gave His only-begotten Son" for you that you "might not perish but have everlasting life"? May eternity reveal that you have put up the earnest prayer to God, Lord, "seek thy servant," and have been rescued.