If you're tempted to boast about your abilities, just look up. The grandeur of the heavens will quickly show you how puny you are. You cannot move the smallest star from its course. You cannot quench even one beam of morning light. We speak of power, but the heavens laugh us to scorn!

When the constellation Pleiades rises in spring, bringing warmth and life, can you restrain its influence? When Orion reigns aloft in the winter sky, and the earth lies bound in winter's fetters, can you break those icy chains? The seasons revolve according to God's appointment. The whole race of men together cannot change their course.

Lord, what is man?

In the spiritual realm, just as in nature, our power is limited on all hands. When the Holy Spirit sheds abroad his delights in a soul, none can disturb it! All the cunning and malice of men are powerless against the life-giving power of the Comforter. When he deigns to visit a church and bring revival, the most inveterate enemies cannot resist the good work. Oh, they may ridicule it. But they can no more restrain it than they can push back the spring when God has decreed it. God wills it, and so it must be.

But turn the coin over. If the Lord, in his sovereignty or in his justice, binds up a man in spiritual bondage, who can set him free? He alone can remove the winter of spiritual death from an individual or a people. He looses the bands of Orion, and none but he.

What a blessing that he can do it! O that he would perform the wonder tonight!

Lord, end my winter. Let my spring begin. I cannot with all my longings raise my soul out of her death and dullness. But all things are possible with you. I need celestial influences—the clear shinings of your love, the beams of your grace, the light of your countenance. These are my Pleiades. I suffer much from sin and temptation. These are my wintry signs, my terrible Orion.

Lord, work wonders in me, and for me. Amen.