Thankfulness ought to be a sweet duty. It is a joy to cherish gratitude.
Generous hearts do not need to be told to be thankful, and they who are
only thankful to order are not thankful at all. In nothing is the
ordinary experience of the ordinary Christian more defective, and
significant of the deficiencies of their faith, than in the tepidness
and interruptedness of their gratitude. The blessings bestowed are
continuous and unspeakable. The thanks returned are grudging and scanty.
The river that flows from God is 'full of water' and pours out
unceasingly, and all that we return is a tiny trickle, often choked and
sometimes lost in the sands.
Our thankfulness ought to be constant. The fire on the altar should
never be quenched. The odour of the sweet-smelling incense should ever
ascend. Why is it that we have so little of this grace which the Apostle
in our text regards as the precious stone that binds all Christian
graces together, the sparkling crest of the wave of a Christian life?
Mainly because we have so little of the habit of regarding all things as
God's Fatherly discipline and meditating on that for which they are
making us meet. We need a far more habitual contemplation of our
inheritance, of our experience as lovingly given by God to fit us for it
and of the darkest hours which would otherwise try our faith and silence
our praise as necessary parts of that preparation. If this be our
habitual attitude of mind, and these be ever present to us, our song
will be always of His mercy and our whole lives a thank-offering.
The text is a prophecy describing the inheritance in its perfect form.
Earthly life must be ended before it is fully understood. Down in the
valleys we praised God, but tears and mysteries sometimes saddened our
songs; but now on the summit surveying all behind, and knowing by a
blessed eternity of experience to what it has led, even an inheritance
incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not away, we shall praise
Him with a new song for ever.
Thankfulness is the one element of worship common to earth and heaven,
to angels and to us. Whilst they sing, 'Bless the Lord all ye His
hosts,' redeemed men have still better reason to join in the chorus and
answer, 'Bless the Lord, O my soul.'