Saturday's Devotion

Saturday, February 28, 1998

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. (Hebrews 13:8 NRSV)

One crisp winter evening, a pastor got an astronomy lesson from his teenage son. About forty-five degrees up from the horizon in the northern sky, the boy pointed to the North Star. He pointed out that the constellations--Taurus, Pegasus, Orion, and all the others. They rotate like the hands of a clock around that one fixed light--the North Star. They move, but it never moves. That is why sailors in every century have used the North Star to steer in the right direction. It is always a reliable point of reference. It does raise or lower about twenty-three degrees in reference to the horizon between summer and winter. But while everything else in the heavens shuffles around, it basically stands still.

Perhaps Abraham Lincoln had the North Star in mind. During the darkest days of the Civil War, Lincoln had the burden of sustaining the hopes of the Union. Once when a delegation called at the White House with a catalogue of crises facing America, Lincoln comforted them with this story: "Years ago," said Lincoln, "a young friend and I were out one night when a shower of meteors fell from the clear November sky. The young man was frightened, but I told him to look up in the sky past the shooting stars to the fixed stars beyond shining serene in the firmament, and I said, 'Let us not mind the meteors, but let us keep our eyes on the stars.'"

There are some lights that shine as a fixed reminder of a permanent reality. The light of Christ is that kind of light. Indeed, the whole idea of liberty is impossible without the dignity Christ gives to the individual life. How can anyone count his or her life unworthy who can say, "The Son of God died for me?"

Prayer: Dear Jesus, continue to be a permanent reality of God's light in my life everyday. Amen.

Written by: Ronald Newhouse, Texas, USA

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