January 3

Read: Philippians 3:12-14

My one thought is, to press on to the goal for the prize of God’s high call in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:13-14, Moffatt).

God’s High Call

All that you do, do with your might; Things done by halves are never done right.

As these lines come back from childhood memories, we approve them almost instinctively. We know that Oliver Wendell Holmes was right:

Let us do our work as well, Both the unseen and the seen; Make a house where gods may dwell, Beautiful, entire and clean.

Deep within the mind of every right-thinking person is the conviction that anything worth doing at all is worth doing well. If this be true of other worthy endeavors, how much more should it be true d my religion?

We who have once felt God’s presence with us can never be content without Him; and we who have enjoyed something d His love know an ever-recurring hunger for more of that grace. Peter writes to his fellow Christians: “Like newly born children, thirst for the pure, spiritual milk to make you grow up to salvation. You have had a taste of the kindness of the Lord: come to him then — come to that living Stone… come and like living stones yourselves, be built into a spiritual house” (I Peter 2:2-5, Moffatt).

Peter mixed his metaphors but he knew the urgency of this spiritual hunger. And we know it. With Paul my own heart responds: “My one thought.., is to press on to the goal for the prize of God’s high call in Christ Jesus.”

More about Jesus would I know, More of His grace to others show; More of His saving fullness see, More of His love who died for me.

— E. E. Hewitt