Streams in the Desert July 26 Daily Devotional

For we through the Spirit by faith wait for the hope of righteousness (Gal.5:5, R.V.).
There are times when things look very dark to me--so dark that I have to wait even for hope. It is bad enough to wait in hope, to

see no glimmer of a prospect & yet refuse to despair; to have
nothing but night before the casement & yet to keep; the casement open for possible stars; to have a vacant place in my heart & yet
to allow that place to be filled by no inferior presence--that is
the grandest patience in the universe. It is Job in the tempest; it is Abraham on the road to Moriah; it is Moses in the desert of
Midian; it is the Son of man in the Garden of Gethsemane.
There is no patience so hard as that which endures, "as seeing him who is invisible"; it is the waiting for hope.
Thou hast made waiting beautiful; Thou has made patience divine. Thou hast taught us that the Father's will may be received just
because it is His will. Thou hast revealed to us that a soul may see nothing but sorrow in the cup and yet may refuse to let it go, convinced that the eye of the Father sees further than its own.
Give me this Divine power of Thine, the power of Gethsemane. Give me the power to wait for hope itself, to look out from the casement
where there are no stars. Give me the power, when the very joy that was set before me is gone, to stand unconquered amid the night, and
say, "To the eye of my Father it is perhaps shining still." I shall
reach the climax of strength when I have learned to wait for hope. --George Matheson.
Strive to be one of those-so few-who walk the earth with
ever-present consciousness-all mornings, middays, star-times that the unknown which men call Heaven is "close behind the visible
scene of things.