Morning & Evening Devotional Reading–

 March 19– Evening

by C. H. Spurgeon, revised and edited by W. C. Neff

“[Ruth] ate until she was satisfied and then left.” 

—Ruth 2:14

Whenever we are privileged to eat at Jesus’s table, we are, like Ruth, satisfied with a full and tasty feast. When Jesus is the host, no guest goes away from the table hungry. Our head is satisfied with the precious truth which Christ reveals; our heart is content with Jesus as the altogether lovely object of our affection; our hope is satisfied, for what more could we have in heaven but Jesus himself? Jesus fills our conscience with perfect peace, our judgment with the certainty of his teachings, our memory with recollections of what he has done for us, and our imagination with the prospects of what he is yet to do.

As Ruth was “satisfied and then left,” so is it with us. We have taken large helpings of Jesus and thought we had eaten our fill of him, and yet we had to leave a full table behind us. We sat at the table of the Lord’s love and said, “I am such a great sinner that it will require infinite merit to wash my sin away.” But after our sins had been removed, we found that Christ had merit yet to spare. Our hunger was relieved at the feast of his sacred love, and yet there is plenty of spiritual food remaining.

There are certain sweet things in the Word of God which we have not yet enjoyed and which, at least for now, must be left behind. We are like the disciples to whom Jesus said, “I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” There are graces which we have not yet reached, places of fellowship nearer to Christ we have not yet known, and heights of communion which our feet have not yet climbed. At every banquet of love, there are many baskets of fragments left over. In time, we will return to the table, and, by so doing, magnify the generosity of our glorious host. [M&E]