Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadJohn Macduff Collection: MacDuff, John - Hospice Of Pilgrim: 22 The Hospice Outlook
TOPIC: MacDuff, John - Hospice Of Pilgrim (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 22 The Hospice Outlook
Other Subjects in this Topic:
THE HOSPICE OUTLOOK
"Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."
"If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there you may be also." John 14:3
"Come unto Me" is now echoed in a voice from Heaven.
He who gave the invitation to the weary and heavy laden, in a world of unrest, issues the same under a different formula, regarding the world of everlasting rest. He will return to receive His people to Himself, pronouncing the promised beatitude, "Come, you blessed of My Father." No longer sin-laden, sorrow-laden pilgrims; but with every dimmed eye dried, every burden laid down, every foe conquered, He will conduct them to what the old writers call "the rest without a rest," the rest from sin and trial, the rest from the great fight of afflictions. The pilgrim lies down at night, weary and fatigued, in the earthly Hospice. When he awakes, he is in the heavenly one. His window looks no more out on cloud and storm and blackness. He is bathed in the light of Paradise. Yet he awakes not to dreamy inaction--rather will it be to participate in the unresting activities of the ransomed, "serving Him day and night in His temple." "They rest not" (Rev. 4:8).
What an elevating thought, that the divine Rest-Giver is now, in His unresting love, preparing a Home, rearing a Hospice for His pilgrims on the true Alps of God, the everlasting hills of glory, where tempests of affliction never brood, and wintry Death no longer sways his icy scepter; no baffled hopes or frustrated plans--"the rest that remains." When they leave the world, to use another metaphor, it is not to an unknown land they are sailing. They are going, as millions before them have gone, to colonize the better country.
Be it specially noted, too, He is "preparing a place" for His redeemed. It is true, most true, in a conventional phrase, that heaven's main characteristic is "not locality, but character." The pure in heart shall see God. The righteous shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. But neither must we dispense with the literal comfort of our Lord's words, that He has gone to make ready some special dwelling-place, where He will receive His people to Himself. What or where is the favored spot in the realms of space we cannot, by the boldest flight of a sanctified imagination, tell. For His risen saints, in their glorified resurrection-bodies, and for His own glorified Self, the center of their adoring homage, there must be some thing more than an ethereal, unmaterialistic heaven--a mere spirit-world. "In my Father's house are many mansions"--mansions suited and adapted for the tastes, capacities, idiosyncrasies of His vast family; the unreached ideals of earth fully attained in the perfected household above.
Lord Jesus, prepare me for the place which You have gone to prepare for me. Amid the often fretful calls of existence, let me catch the joyous chimes wafted from the bells of glory. There may be, and will be, tearful partings here. There are angel-welcomes and saint-welcomes there, and His own welcome best of all. "I will come again!" Let me have my heart's best chambers meanwhile lustrated and plenished for the advent of the Elder Brother. Let no discordant note mar the joy of that welcome. "A little while, and you shall not see me--and again, a little while, and you shall see me!" The first little while is now running its course in the sand-glass; its hours and moments may soon, and must, sooner or later, be numbered and completed. May I be ready, always ready, for the "again, a little while, and you shall see Me,"--when the advent morn shall dawn, and the gates of the heavenly hospice be thrown open for waiting pilgrims.
"Rest comes at length; though life be long and dreary,
The day must dawn, and darksome night be past;
Faith's journey ends in welcome to the weary,
And heaven, the heart's true home, is ours at last!"
"Make haste, my Beloved, and be like to a roe or to a young deer upon the mountains of spices."
"This is the resting place, let the weary rest. This is the place of repose." Isaiah 28:12