For Gratitude for Mercies
“What shall I render unto the Lord for all His henefita towards me?” — Ps. cxvi. 12.
O God, I adore Thee as the Author and Giver of every good and every perfect gift. Thou art daily loading me with Thy benefits. Every returning morning brings with it fresh causes for gratitude — new material for praise. I bless Thee for Thy temporal bounties — “how great has been the sum of them!” While others have been pining in poverty, or wasted by sickness, or racked in pain, or left friendless and portionless. Thou hast been making showers of blessing to fall around my dwelling. I laid me down last night and slept — I awaked, for the Lord sustained me. I might never have seen the morning light.
Mine might have been the midnight summons to meet a God in whose righteous presence I was all unmeet and unprepared to stand. And yet I am again spared a monument of Thy goodness. Oh, do Thou enkindle a flame of undying gratitude to Thee, on the clay-cold altar of my heart. I mourn and lament that I am so little and so feebly affected by the magnitude of Thy mercies, and especially by the riches of Thy grace and love manifested in Jesus; — that my affections are so little alive to the incalculable obligation under which I am laid to Him who hath “loved me with an everlasting love.” I am doubly Thine. Creation and redemption combine in claiming all I am, and all I have, for Thee and Thy service. Good Lord, preserve me from the sin of insensibility to Thine unwearied kindness — of taking Thy mercies as matters of course, and thus living in a state of independence of Thee. May my whole existence become a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving — may all my doings testify the sincerity and devotion of a heart feelingly alive to every gift of the great Giver; and, especially, may I be so brought under the constraining influence of redeeming love, as to consecrate every power of my body and every faculty of my soul to Him who so willingly consecrated and shed His very life’s blood for me.
Lord, this day shine upon me with the light of Thy countenance; may every mercy I experience in the course of it be hallowed and sweetened by the thought that it comes from God. And, while ever mindful and thankful in the midst of present mercies, teach me to keep in view the crowning mercy of all — the hope of at last sharing Thy presence and full fruition, and of joining in the eternal ascription with the ransomed multitude above, who cease not day nor night to celebrate Thy praises.
Bless all near and dear to me. Defend them by Thy mighty power. Give them too, gratitude for mercies past, and the sure and well-grounded hope of a glorious inheritance in that better world, where mercy is unmixed with judgment, and joy undarkened by sorrow. And all I ask is for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
“CAUSE ME TO HEAR THY LOVING-KINDNESS IN THE MORNING, FOR IN THEE DO I TRUST.”