Morning & Evening Devotional Reading–

August 1– Evening

by C. H. Spurgeon, revised and edited by W. C. Neff

“[Lord,] you crown the year with your goodness.”

—Psalm 65:11

All the year round, every hour of every day, God is richly blessing us. He blesses us when we sleep, and when we wake up his mercy waits upon us. The sun may succumb to darkness, but our God never ceases to shine upon his children with beams of love. Like a river his lovingkindness is always flowing with a fullness as inexhaustible as his own nature. Like the atmosphere which constantly surrounds the earth and is always ready to support the life of man, the benevolence of God surrounds all his creatures. The environment was made for them, and in it they live, and move, and have their being.

Yet, just as the sun shines more brightly on certain days and as rivers are at certain seasons swollen by the rain, so is it with the mercy of God; it has its golden hours. There are times when His grace overflows and is magnified for all to see.

Among the most blessed times of the year are the joyous days of harvest; they are a special season of excessive favor. It is the glory of autumn that the ripe gifts of God’s provision are abundantly displayed. It is the mellow season of realization. The springtime and the summer were seasons of hope and expectation, but the there is great joy in Autumn’s harvest. Happy are the reapers who fill their arms with the liberality of heaven.

The Psalmist tells us that the harvest is the crowning of the year. Surely these crowning mercies call for crowning thanksgiving! So, let us express our inward emotions of gratitude. Let our hearts be warmed; let our spirits meditate upon this goodness of the Lord. Then let us praise him with our lips and magnify the One from whom all this goodness flows. And let us glorify God by yielding our gifts to his cause. Let us proof of our gratitude with a special thank-offering to the Lord of the harvest. [M&E]