Streams in the Desert

Jan27*

Jan18
Defeat may serve as well as victory
To shake the soul and let the glory out.
When the great oak is straining in the wind, The limbs drink in new beauty, and the trunk Sends down a deeper root on the windward side. Only the soul that knows the mighty grief Can know the mighty rapture. Sorrows come To stretch out spaces in the heart for joy.

Jan19*

Jan20

From The Heavenly Life
The dark brown soil is turned By the sharp-pointed plow; And I’ve a lesson learned.
My life is but a field,
Stretched out beneath God’s sky, Some harvest rich to yield.
Where grows the golden grain? Where faith? Where sympathy? In a furrow cut by pain.
Maltbie D. Babcock

Jan21
from Days of Heaven upon Earth
A hero is not fed on sweets,
Daily his own heart he eats; Chambers of the great are jails, And head winds right for royal sails.
Ralph Waldo Emerson.


Tribulation is the door to triumph.The valley leads to the open highway,and tribulation’s imprint is on every great accom- plishment. Crowns are cast in crucibles, and the chains of charac- ter found at the feet of God are forged in earthly flames. No one wins the greatest victory until he has walked the winepress of woe.With deep furrows of anguish on His brow, the “man of sorrows” (Isa. 53:3) said, “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33). But immediately comes the psalm of promise, “Take heart! I have overcome the world.”

The footprints are visible everywhere.The steps that lead to thrones are stained with spattered blood, and scars are the
price for scepters.We will wrestle our crowns from the giants we conquer. It is no secret that grief has always fallen to people of greatness.

The mark of rank in nature Is capacity for pain;
And the anguish of the singer Makes the sweetest of the strain.

Jan 22
John Ruskin
Called aside—
From the glad working of your busy life,
From the world’s ceaseless stir of care and strife,
Into the shade and stillness by your Heavenly Guide For a brief time you have been called aside.
Called aside—
Perhaps into a desert garden dim;
And yet not alone, when you have been with Him, And heard His voice in sweetest accents say: “Child, will you not with Me this still hour stay?”
Called aside—
In hidden paths with Christ your Lord to tread, Deeper to drink at the sweet Fountainhead, Closer in fellowship with Him to roam,
Nearer, perhaps, to feel your Heavenly Home.
Called aside—
Oh, knowledge deeper grows with Him alone; In secret oft His deeper love is shown,
And learned in many an hour of dark distress Some rare, sweet lesson of His tenderness.
Called aside—
We thankYou for the stillness and the shade;
We thankYou for the hidden pathsYour love has made, And, so that we have wept and watched with Thee, We thankYou for our dark Gethsemane.
Called aside—
O restful thought—He doeth all things well; O blessed sense, with Christ alone to dwell; So in the shadow of Your cross to hide,
We thank You, Lord, to have been called aside.

Jan 23
Although the path be all unknown?
Although the way be drear?
Its shades I travel not alone
When steps of Yours are near.

Jan24
Believing Him; if storm clouds gather darkly ’round,
And even if the heavens seem hushed, without a sound?
He hears each prayer and even notes the sparrow’s fall.
And praising Him; when sorrow, grief, and pain are near,
And even when we lose the thing that seems most dear?
Our loss is gain. Praise Him; in Him we have our All.
Our hand in His; e’en though the path seems long and drear
We scarcely see a step ahead, and almost fear?
He guides us right—this way and that, to keep us near.
And satisfied; when every path is blocked and bare,
And worldly things are gone and dead which were so fair?
Believe and rest and trust in Him, He comes to stay.

Since there are no Poems in Jan25, I will share the devotional piece from Jan24 which are beautiful.

God knows exactly when to withhold or to grant us any vis- ible sign of encouragement. How wonderful it is when we will trust Him in either case! Yet it is better when all visible evidence that He is remembering us is withheld. He wants us to realize that HisWord—His promise of remembering us—is more real and dependable than any evidence our senses may reveal. It is good when He sends the visible evidence, but we appreciate it even more after we have trusted Him without it. And those who are the most inclined to trust God without any evidence except HisWord always receive the greatest amount of visible evidence of His love.
Delayed answers to prayers are not refusals. Many prayers are received and recorded, yet underneath are the words, “My time has not yet come.” God has a fixed time and an ordained purpose, and He who controls the limits of our lives also deter- mines the time of our deliverance.

Jan26
This is quite long but a good read.

The Bible has a great deal to say about waiting for God, and the teaching cannot be too strongly emphasized.We so easily become impatient with God’s delays.Yet much of our trouble in life is the result of our restless, and sometimes reckless, haste.

We cannot wait for the fruit to ripen, but insist on picking it while it is still green.We cannot wait for the answers to our prayers, although it may take many years for the things we pray for to be prepared for us.We are encouraged to walk with God, but often God walks very slowly.Yet there is also another side to this teaching: God often waits for us.

Quite often we fail to receive the blessing He has ready for us because we are not moving forward with Him.While it is true we miss many blessings by not waiting for God, we also lose numerous blessings by overwaiting. There are times when it takes strength simply to sit still, but there are also times when we are to move forward with a confident step.
Many of God’s promises are conditional, requiring some ini- tial action on our part. Once we begin to obey, He will begin to bless us. Great things were promised to Abraham, but not one of them could have been obtained had he waited in Chaldea. He had to leave his home, friends, and country, travel unfamil- iar paths, and press on in unwavering obedience in order to receive the promises.The ten lepers Jesus healed were told to show themselves to the priest, and “as they went, they were cleansed” (Luke 17:14). If they had waited to see the cleansing come to their bodies before leaving, they would never have seen it. God was waiting to heal them, and the moment their faith began to work, the blessing came.

When the Israelites were entrapped by Pharaoh’s pursuing army at the Red Sea, they were commanded to “go forward” (Ex. 14:15 KJV). No longer was it their duty to wait, but to rise up from bended knees and “go forward” with heroic faith. Years later the Israelites were commanded to show their faith again by beginning their march over the Jordan while the river was at its highest point.They held the key to unlock the gate into the Land of Promise in their own hands, and the gate would not begin to turn on its hinges until they had approached and unlocked it.The key was faith.

We are destined to fight certain battles, and we think we can never be victorious and conquer our enemies.Yet as we enter the conflict, One comes who fights by our side.Through Him we are “more than conquerors” (Rom. 8:37). If we had waited in fear and trembling for our Helper to come before we would enter the battle, we would have waited in vain.This would have been the overwaiting of unbelief. God is waiting to pour out His richest blessings on you.“Go forward” with bold confidence and take what is yours.“I have begun to deliver. . . . Now begin to conquer and possess.” J. R. Miller

Jan27-

Jan28
Oh, the sweetness that dwells in a harp of many strings,
While each, all vocal with love in a tuneful harmony rings! But, oh, the wail and the discord, when one and another is rent, Tensionless, broken and lost, from the cherished instrument.
For rapture of love is linked with the pain or fear of loss, And the hand that takes the crown, must ache
with many a cross;
Yet he who has never a conflict, wins never a victor’s palm, And only the toilers know the sweetness of rest and calm.
Only between the storms can the Alpine traveler know Transcendent glory of clearness, marvels of gleam and glow; Had he the brightness unbroken of cloudless summer days, This had been dimmed by the dust and the veil
of a brooding haze.
Who would dare the choice, neither or both to know,
The finest quiver of joy or the agony thrill of woe!
Never the exquisite pain, then never the exquisite bliss, For the heart that is dull to that can never be strung to this.

Jan29
When God is the center of a kingdom or a city, He makes it strong “like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken” (Ps. 125:1). And when God is the center of a soul, although disas- ters may crowd in on all sides and roar like the waves of the sea, there is a constant calm within.

The world can neither give nor take away this kind of peace.What is it that causes people to shake like leaves today at the first hint of danger? It is sim- ply the lack of God living in their soul, and having the world in their hearts instead. R. Leighton

“Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever” (Ps. 125:1).There is an old Scottish version of this psalm that strengthens our blood like iron:
Who clings to God in constant trust As Zion’s mount he stands full just, And who moves not, nor yet does reel, But stands forever strong as steel!