March 27

“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” — John 8:12

We are always coming to points we have never passed before. Every new temptation is such a point. We cannot get through it unless we have a guide.

Some of you know how dark and strange it seemed to you, the first time you had to enter the valley of sorrow. A godly man says: “I shall never forget, while memory lasts, the strangeness of the experience through which I passed, when first the reaper whose name is Death came into my home, and with his sickle keen cut down at one thrust, two of my children! The stroke blinded me for the moment; but when at length I opened my eyes, I saw the ark in the river, and that instantly steadied me. I knew then where I was.”

Every new duty brings us also to a way we know not. Every fresh responsibility calls us to walk in an unfamiliar road. All of life is untrodden, and we cannot find the way ourselves.

Then there is that last walk on earth–into the valley of shadows. We never can get any experience in dying; for no feet ever walk twice on that way, nor has any friend ever come back to tell us what it is like. When we come to die, we shall find ourselves in an experience we have never known before. If we have not Christ in the strange, unfamiliar path, we shall not find the way.