Spurgeon: August PM
* 08/01/PM
"Thou crownest the year with Thy goodness."
--Psalm 65:11
All the year round, every hour of every day, God is richly
blessing us; both when we sleep and when we wake His mercy waits
upon us. The sun may leave us a legacy of darkness, but our God
never ceases to shine upon His children with beams of love. Like
a river, His lovingkindness is always flowing, with a fulness
inexhaustible as His own nature. Like the atmosphere which
constantly surrounds the earth, and is always ready to support
the life of man, the benevolence of God surrounds all His
creatures; in it, as in their element, they live, and move, and
have their being. Yet as the sun on summer days gladdens us with
beams more warm and bright than at other times, and as rivers
are at certain seasons swollen by the rain, and as the
atmosphere itself is sometimes fraught with more fresh, more
bracing, or more balmy influences than heretofore, so is it with
the mercy of God; it hath its golden hours; its days of
overflow, when the Lord magnifieth His grace before the sons of
men. Amongst the blessings of the nether springs, the joyous
days of harvest are a special season of excessive favour. It is
the glory of autumn that the ripe gifts of providence are then
abundantly bestowed; it is the mellow season of realization,
whereas all before was but hope and expectation. Great is the
joy of harvest. Happy are the reapers who fill their arms with
the liberality of heaven. The Psalmist tells us that the harvest
is the crowning of the year. Surely these crowning mercies call
for crowning thanksgiving! Let us render it by the inward
emotions of gratitude . Let our hearts be warmed; let our
spirits remember, meditate, and think upon this goodness of the
Lord. Then let us praise Him with our lips , and laud and
magnify His name from whose bounty all this goodness flows. Let
us glorify God by yielding our gifts to His cause. A practical
proof of our gratitude is a special thank-offering to the Lord
of the harvest.