1 Peter 1:3-5 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ… The traveller on the Highland railway can hardly fail to be struck, as he journeys north, with the unusual sight of a picturesque and well-kept flower garden blooming in the angle of ground formed at the junction of two rail way lines. The helpless flowers thrive there in spite of the terrible forces that come so near them on every side. If you were to put an untaught savage inside the garden hedge, and let him hear the screaming engines, and see the files of carriages, or the trucks laden with coal, timber, and iron, converging toward this fairy oasis, he would be ready to say, "These beautiful things will be torn to shreds in a moment." But behind the garden fences there are lines of strong, faithful steel, keeping each engine and carriage and truck in its appointed place; and though the air vibrates with destructive forces, the pansy, primrose, and geranium live in a world of tremors, not a silken filament is snapped, and not a petal falls untimely to the earth. In the very angle of these forces the frailest life is unharmed. To all these possibilities of destruction the steel puts its bound. So with the fine spiritual husbandries that foster faith in the souls around us. That faith some times seems a thing of hair-spun filaments, a bundle of frailties, a fairy fabric of soft-hued gossamers trembling at every breath. The avalanche of nineteenth century atheism is poised over it. The air hurtles with fiery hostilities. The mechanisms of diabolic temptation encroach on every side upon our work. Public house, gaming club, ill-ordered home, threaten disasters, of which we do not like to think. The air quivers with the anger of demons. Yet the work is God's, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. In the very angle of these demoniac forces the work shall thrive, for the hidden lines of His protecting power are round about it. (T. G. Selby.) Parallel Verses KJV: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, |
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