January 13th
Ye shall have a song. (Isaiah 30:29)
Someone writes of sitting one winter evening by an open wood fire, and listening to the green logs as the fire flamed about them. All manner of sounds came out of the wood as it burned, and the writer, with poetic fancy, suggests that they were imprisoned songs, long sleeping in silence in the wood, brought out now by the fire.
When the tree stood in the forest the birds came and sat on its boughs and sang their songs. The wind, too, breathed through the branches making weird, strange music. One day a child sat on the moss by the tree's root and sang its happy gladness in a snatch of sweet melody. A penitent sat under the tree's shade and with trembling tones, amid falling leaves, sang the fifty-first Psalm. And all these notes of varied song sank into the tree as it stood there, and hid away in its trunk. There they slept until the tree was cut down and part of it became a backlog in the cheerful evening fire. Then the flames brought out the music.
This is but the poet's fancy as the tree and the songs of the backlog are concerned. But is there not here a little parable which may be likened to many human life? Life has its varied notes and tones-some glad, some choked in tears. Years pass and the life gives out no music of praise, sings no songs to bless others. But, at length, grief comes, and in the flames the long-imprisoned music is set free and sings its praise to God and its notes of love to cheer and bless the world. Gathered in life's long summer and stored away in the heart, it is given out in the hours of suffering and pain.
Many a rejoicing Christian never learned to sing till the flames kindled upon him. J. R. Miller
Gather the driftwood that will light the winter fire!
