Spurgeon: September PM
* 09/07/PM
"There is sorrow on the sea; it cannot be quiet."
--Jeremiah 49:23
Little know we what sorrow may be upon the sea at this
moment. We are safe in our quiet chamber, but far away on the
salt sea the hurricane may be cruelly seeking for the lives of
men. Hear how the death fiends howl among the cordage; how every
timber starts as the waves beat like battering rams upon the
vessel! God help you, poor drenched and wearied ones! My prayer
goes up to the great Lord of sea and land, that He will make the
storm a calm, and bring you to your desired haven! Nor ought I
to offer prayer alone, I should try to benefit those hardy men
who risk their lives so constantly. Have I ever done anything
for them? What can I do? How often does the boisterous sea
swallow up the mariner! Thousands of corpses lie where pearls
lie deep. There is death-sorrow on the sea, which is echoed in
the long wail of widows and orphans. The salt of the sea is in
many eyes of mothers and wives. Remorseless billows, ye have
devoured the love of women, and the stay of households. What a
resurrection shall there be from the caverns of the deep when
the sea gives up her dead! Till then there will be sorrow on the
sea. As if in sympathy with the woes of earth, the sea is for
ever fretting along a thousand shores, wailing with a sorrowful
cry like her own birds, booming with a hollow crash of unrest,
raving with uproarious discontent, chafing with hoarse wrath, or
jangling with the voices of ten thousand murmuring pebbles. The
roar of the sea may be joyous to a rejoicing spirit, but to the
son of sorrow the wide, wide ocean is even more forlorn than the
wide, wide world. This is not our rest, and the restless billows
tell us so. There is a land where there is no more sea--our
faces are steadfastly set towards it; we are going to the place
of which the Lord hath spoken. Till then, we cast our sorrows on
the Lord who trod the sea of old, and who maketh a way for His
people through the depths thereof.