Nobody can commit his way unto the Lord who has not begun by delighting in the Lord; and nobody can rest in the Lord who has not committed his way to the Lord.
If a man is dying for want of bread, and you give him bread, is that to make him gloomy? That is what Christ is to the soul—the Bread of Life. You will never have true pleasure or peace or joy or comfort until you have found Christ.
Rejoice evermore in your Redeemer,—in His truth—His person—His almighty grace—His everlasting faithfulness—His precious blood whose efficacy reaches farther than the eye of your conscience ever penetrated, and cleanses you from a sinfulness more inveterate than you have ever conceived to be yours.
As the skillful artist, in making a good portrait, finds it essentially necessary to use the dark and bright colors alternately, so the Divine Artist dips His pencil, by turns, in Marah and Elim. In Marah first, and the background is laid in darkness black as midnight; and then in Elim, and the blackness is relieved with the colors of the rainbow.
These are the marks of a heart that is living in the joy of the resurrection. It lives out of itself; and living out of itself, by this unselfish joy, it has a joy in itself which comes from the presence of Jesus Christ; the overflow of His peace which passeth all sense, the consciousuess of that twofold relationship—His relation to us, our relation to Him, and our mutual and indissoluble love.
—Manning.
