Sunday, August 13, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

Some people may be backward, slow; it can take them a long lifetime just to learn who they are.  The recent issue of Newsweek suggests in its cover article how that may be true even of dear Billy Graham, our famous presidents’ pastor in his old age. These people are the “heavy-laden” whom Jesus invites to “come unto Me,” but they’ve been a lifetime still coming. They can’t say even yet that they’ve “arrived.”

 

Over a near century of living we’ve been “coming” every day, but that doesn’t mean we’re unhappy. It’s a joy to feel each new morning as Paul did, “Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; ... I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those [bad] things which are behind and reaching forward to those [good] things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:12-14).

 

These dear people seem never to get out of the kindergarten, they always hesitate to claim promotion even to the first grade. Life is too happily exciting where they know the Lord has placed them, even though it’s a lowly spot.

 

Sometimes people as old as Billy Graham wish they could have learned who they are when they were back in their teens (maybe 18?; one should be a little mature at that age!). But Psalm 139 becomes a mantra of comfort: “You have formed my inward parts; You have covered me in my mother’s womb. ... When I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth, ... [my] days [were] fashioned for me when as yet there were none of them” (vss . 13-16). That’s your psalm, even if you’re not worthy of it.

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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