Text and art by I. Lilias Trotter
‘Until the day break and the shadows flee away I will get me to the mountain of myrrh and to the hill of frankincense.‘ – this has been the word of the Lord to me today, with a meaning hitherto unseen; that the gathering of the bitter-sweet myrrh of heart-brokenness over failure and shortcomings, over all the might-have-beens of the past, can bring us nearer to Jesus than all the gathering of frankincense on the hills. Such is the abounding grace that, even where sin has abounded, the place where we wash his feet with our tears has a great nearness to his holy place above.
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To forgive is more than a matter of speech. It is the full-blooded energy of one life working to the full deliverance of another life. To forgive a man is to deliver a man and that will require your thought, your prayer, your speech and your deeds.
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The meat offering is fraught with a warning note for it seems to mean the life of sacrifice, not as the burnt offering, perfect before God, but perfected in human relationships… we have seen God draw very near to a mighty outpouring of his Spirit; and then the overflow has been checked and has sunk, as it were, into barren sand because of some failure in love or forbearance, some looking to our own things rather than the things of others – even our own ‘holy things’ in which, alas, iniquity may be found if we hold them apart from God.