John 11:9-10 Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbles not… I. THE PREDESTINATION OF LIFE. God has marked out beforehand the length of the life. This was true of the life of Christ. He was in daylight till the twelfth hour. He could not die. His time was not yet come. It is true of us. God knows exactly the length of our "day," and therefore of our "hour." The day shall run its course, whether the season be winter or summer, whether the hour be thirty minutes or sixty. This is a call to confidence. Be not afraid to go at the summons of duty, in spite of snare, terror, accident or infection. The day will have its twelve hours. II. THE COMPLETENESS OF LIFE. We speak of a child or young man's life as prematurely closed. Isaiah speaks of the longevity of the time when a child shall die hundred years old. Certainly there have been children whose little life has been well completed — their innocence and death testifying powerfully for Christ. Their day has had its twelve hours, though the constituent hour was less than a year. We must cast away the common measurement of time. Christ's life was a short one, and how large a part was spent in preparation? No time is less wasted than that given to preparation. Christ's three years of speech had in them the whole virtue, for the world, of two eternities. Christ's thirty years of listening were not the prelude only, but the condition of the three. Each life, the shortest not least, is complete. Man's work depends not on his longevity. Many a young man sleeping in the churchyard sends forth the fragrance of a perpetual sanctity. Use well your time, longer or shorter, and the hours shall be twelve, and the component hour shall have its constituent moments sure. III. THE UNITY OF LIFE. We would fain divorce hour from hour, and never recognize their bearing upon each other and the day. And it is true that repentance severs one part of the day from another, and make old age — and therefore eternity — diverse from the boyhood. It is also true that a Christian does well to take his years, months, days, one by one and to live each as if it were the only one. Nevertheless, we cannot disguise the unity of this being. We may wish we had not done that wicked thing, fallen into that evil habit, but it is there: we cannot cut off the entail. God sees the day as one: and when He writes an epitaph He does so in one of two lines. "He did that which was good." "He did that which was evil" — the identification is complete, the character one. IV. THE DISTRIBUTION OF LIFE. God sees it in its unity. He bids us see it in its manifoldness; in its variety of opportunity and capability of good. Where is the moment which might not contribute something? Economize. Give up some fragment to God. (Dean Vaughan.) Parallel Verses KJV: Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world. |
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