VoV: Humility in Service

MIGHTY GOD,

I humble myself for faculties misused,
  opportunities neglected,
  words ill-advised,
I repent of my folly and inconsiderate ways,
  my broken resolutions, untrue service,
  my backsliding steps,
  my vain thoughts.
O bury my sins in the ocean of Jesus' blood
  and let no evil result from my fretful temper,
   unseemly behaviour, provoking pettiness.
If by unkindness I have wounded or hurt another,
  do thou pour in the balm of heavenly consolation;
If I have turned coldly from need, misery, grief,
  do not in just anger forsake me:
If I have withheld relief from penury and pain,
  do not withhold thy gracious bounty from me.
If I have shunned those who have offended me,
  keep open the door of thy heart to my need.

Fill me with an over-flowing ocean of compassion,
  the reign of love my motive,
  the law of love my rule.

O thou God of all grace, make me more thankful,
   more humble;
Inspire me with a deep sense of my unworthiness
  arising from
   the depravity of my nature, my omitted duties,
   my unimproved advantages, thy commands
    violated by me.
With all my calls to gratitude and joy
   may I remember
    that I have reason for sorrow
     and humiliation;
O give me repentance unto life;
Cement my oneness with my blessed Lord,
  that faith may adhere to him more immovably,
  that love may entwine itself round him
   more tightly,
  that his Spirit may pervade every fibre
   of my being.
Then send me out to make him known
   to my fellow-men.

— The Valley of Vision, Edited by Arthur Bennett (Edinburgh, UK: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1975).

Christmas and the Gift of Humanity

If there's one more lesson to be derived from Christmas then it must be the truth of God's magnanimous declaration that His physical creation is good and that Christ's putting on of human flesh is the guarantee that the physical bodies of His saints, along with the whole of the created order, shall finally be saved and delivered from the tyranny of sin through the bearing in His physical body of its pains, terrors and penalty, both in His perfectly righteous life and in His atoning death.

Another is that when Christ took on the Curse the very moment His newborn infant lungs started breathing air and when He suffered through its harsh realities as He grew in strength and stature as a man (like each and every one of us), He showcased to the universe what a human being was supposed to be, something that only He as the Second Adam could accomplish.

In effect God, in Christ, was giving us back the gift of humanity by becoming human Himself—something that should elicit in us the same praise and worship that it did in the heavenly host, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!" (Luke 2:14).

The Gift of Gifts

O Source of All Good,

  What shall I render to thee for the gift of gifts,
  thine own dear Son, begotten, not created,
  my Redeemer, proxy, surety, substitute,
  his self-emptying incomprehensible,
  his infinity of love beyond the heart's grasp.
Herein is wonder of wonders:
  he came below to raise me above,
  was born like me that I might become like him.
Herein is love;
  when I cannot rise to him he draws near on
    wings of grace,
  to raise me to himself.
Herein is power;
  when Deity and humanity were infinitely apart
  he united them in indissoluble unity,
    the uncreated and the created.
Herein is wisdom;
  when I was undone, with no will to return to him,
  and no intellect to devise recovery,
  he came, God-incarnate, to save me
    to the uttermost,
  as man to die my death,
  to shed satisfying blood on my behalf,
  to work out a perfect righteousness for me.
O God, take me in spirit to the watchful shepherds, 
    and enlarge my mind;
  let me hear good tidings of great joy,
    and hearing, believe, rejoice, praise, adore
    my conscience bathed in an ocean of repose,
    my eyes uplifted to a reconciled Father;
  place me with ox, ass, camel, goat,
    to look with them upon my Redeemer's face,
    and in him account myself delivered from sin;
  let me with Simeon clasp the new-born child
    to my heart,
  embrace him with undying faith,
  exulting that he is mine and I am his.
In him thou hast given me so much
    that heaven can give no more.

— The Valley of Vision, Edited by Arthur Bennett (Edinburgh, UK: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1975).

VoV: Paradoxes

O Changeless God,

   Under the conviction of thy Spirit I learn that
   the more I do, the worse I am,
   the more I know, the less I know,
   the more holiness I have, the more sinful I am,
   the more I love, the more there is to love.
     O wretched man that I am!
O Lord,
   I have a wild heart,
     and cannot stand before thee;
I am like a bird before a man.
How little I love thy truth and ways!
I neglect prayer,
   by thinking I have prayed enough and earnestly,
   by knowing thou hast saved my soul.
Of all hypocrites, grant that I may not be
   an evangelical hypocrite,
   who sins more safely because grace abounds,
   who tells his lusts that Christ's blood
     cleanseth them,
   who reasons that God cannot cast him into hell,
     for he is saved,
   who loves evangelical preaching, churches,
     Christians, but lives unholily.
My mind is a bucket without a bottom,
   with no spiritual understanding,
   no desire for the Lord's Day,
   ever learning but never reaching the truth,
   always at the gospel-well but never holding water.
My conscience is without conviction or contrition,
   with nothing to repent of.
My will is without power of decision or resolution.
My heart is without affection, and full of leaks.
My memory has no retention,
   so I forget easily the lessons learned,
   and thy truths seep away.
Give me a broken heart that yet carries home
   the water of grace.

— The Valley of Vision, Edited by Arthur Bennett (Edinburgh, UK: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1975).