July 5

“Praise be to the Lord! Not one word has failed, of all the wonderful promises He gave!” — 1 Kgs 8:56

It is nearly three thousand years since Solomon uttered this testimony; but we can say now, just as confidently as the king did that day, that in all these centuries since not one word of all God’s good promise has failed any one of his people. No one has ever trusted a promise of God–and had that word fail of fulfillment.

The most real and sure things in this world–are the words of God. In every one of them, God’s own almighty hand is gloved. We clutch them–and find ourselves clutched in turn by divinity, out of whose clasp we never can fall, nor be torn away. We lean upon these words–and find ourselves encircled and upborne by the everlasting arms. We pillow our head in weariness or sorrow upon God’s words of love and comfort–and find ourselves drawn close to our Father’s heart, held in his warm bosom, and soothed by his tenderness, which is gentler than a mother’s.

So all through life, in every experience, we may trust the promises of God, and commit all our interests to them, and be assured in our heart that not one of them will ever fail us. We may trust them, too, in death, and we shall find everything just as God has said: the divine presence with us in the valley, dying but a going to be at home, absent from the body at home with the Lord, in eternal blessedness. Not one Word of God can fail.