Streams in the Desert September 16 Daily Devotional

Hide thyself by the brook Cherith (1 Kings 1 7.3).
God's servants must be taught the value of the hidden life. The man
who is to take a high place before his fellows must take a low
place before his God. We must not be surprised if sometimes our Father says: "There, child, thou hast had enough of this hurry, and publicity, and excitement; get thee hence, and hide thyself by the brook-hide thyself in the Cherith of the sick chamber, or in the
Cherith of bereavement or in some solitude from which the crowds have ebbed away."
Happy is he who can reply, "This Thy will is also mine; I flee unto Thee to hide me. Hide me in the secret of Thy tabernacle, and
beneath the covert of Thy wings!"
Every saintly soul that would wield great power with men must win it in some hidden Cherith. The acquisition of spiritual power is
impossible, unless we can hide ourselves from men and from
ourselves in some deep gorge where we may absorb the power of the
eternal God; as vegetation through long ages absorbed these qualities of sunshine, which it now gives back through burning coal.
Bishop Andrews had his Cherith, in which he spent five hours every day in prayer and devotion. John Welsh had it-who thought the day ill spent which did not witness eight or ten hours of closet
communion. David Brainerd had it in the woods of North America. Christmas Evans had it in his long and lonely journeys amid the
hills of Wales.
Or, passing back to the blessed age from which we date the
centuries: Patmos, the seclusion of the Roman prisons, the Arabian desert, the hills and vales of Palestine, are forever memorable as
the Cheriths of those who have made our modem world.
Our Lord found His Cherith at Nazareth, and in the wilderness of
Judea; amid the olives of Bethany, and the solitude of Gadara. None of us, therefore, can dispense with some Cherith where the sounds
of human voices are exchanged for the waters of quietness which are fed from the throne; and where we may taste the sweets and imbibe the power of a life hidden with Christ. --Elijah, by Meyer.