March 15

But if indeed you or your sons turn away from following Me and do not keep the commandments and statutes I have set before you, and if you go off to serve and worship other gods, then I will cut off Israel from the land that I have given them, and I will banish from My presence this temple I have sanctified for My Name. Then Israel will become an object of scorn and ridicule among all peoples. — 1 Kgs 9:6-7 BSB

Life is a more perilous ocean than the Atlantic. People talk about the fears of death, but living has greater terrors than dying.

In Miss Procter’s poem, a child asks, “What is life, father?” and the answer is that life is a battle where many fail and fall. Then the child asks, “What is death, father?” When she learns that death is the rest that comes after the struggle, she says, “Let me die, father; I fear to live.” But the wise response is, “You must live first and win your crown on life’s battlefields.”

Life is full of dangers, but there is One who can guard us from stumbling and present us faultless before God in the end. We only need Christ as our Friend, and He will bring us safely through every peril. Without Him, we will never make it home.

A tourist in the Alps once refused a guide, saying he could manage on his own. But he never returned.