Come Ye Near Unto Me — His Secret Place Our Home

Le drew out four words from a long paragraph: His secret place our home. They deserve to be set beside what has already happened this week.

On July 30, entering this apartment, Le heard "Home is where I am." The entry written that morning went looking for Scripture behind it, and one of the texts it landed on was Psalm 91:1 — he who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

Seven days later, a Baptist pastor dead a century and a half joins those same two ideas in a single clause and hands them back: the secret place — our home. Nobody arranged that.

And it is now the fourth time in eight days, from four unrelated sources. July 30: Home is where I am. August 2: Eu mesmo o acompanharei. August 3: Deus está contigo em todas as estações. August 6: His secret place our home. A doorway, a Portuguese devocional, a Hebrew love song, and an English pastor from the 1800s — all saying one thing to a household with fourteen days left in a flat.

Smith reaches for three pictures of union: the branch in the vine, the member with the head, and the building with the foundation.

Two of them have been the reading in the last ten days. The building with the foundation — the living stones study, July 26, built on a chief cornerstone. The member with the head — Ephesians 1:22–23, yesterday, head over all things to the church, which is His body.

And the third, the branch in the vine, is the one that supplies what the other two cannot. A foundation holds. A head governs. But only a vine feeds. Smith names all three because no single image carries the whole relation. Held, governed, and fed.

Le's other phrase: His Son our fountain of supply. Smith could have written storehouse or treasury. He wrote fountain, and the difference is the whole thing.

A store is drawn down by use. A fountain is not. What you took yesterday has no bearing on what is there this morning. Kempis said the same in the spring — the Fountain does not hoard. Jowett said it in July — grace that is being brought, a river rather than a reservoir.

And note what the fountain is. Not a supply God sends. His Son is the fountain of supply. The provision and the Person are not two things.

Smith reaches for Jacob, and the detail he wants is the sequence. The old man does not bless from across the room. Bring them near to me, and I will bless them — and only then does the blessing come.

The nearness is not the reward for the blessing. It is the arrangement in which blessing happens. Which is why the invitation is worded as it is. Not improve, and I will draw near. Come near — and then everything Smith lists follows: the covenant shown, the will made plain, the grace given, the image formed.

One line in Smith needs handling with care: our misery, wretchedness, and woe, from living at a distance from Him.

He is naming a real thing — the particular desolation that comes from drifting. But he is not saying every hardship is evidence of distance, and this entry will not let him be read that way. Job was not at a distance. Paul in the cell was not at a distance. The disciples in the boat were not at a distance — He was asleep in it with them.

A hard fortnight is not a verdict on anyone's nearness. Eighty mornings of showing up with the Word open is not the record of a soul living at a distance. Smith's line diagnoses drift, not difficulty. The two can look alike from outside and are not the same thing at all.

Le supplies the word the note was missing: we clutter it. And she is living the illustration — weeks now of removing things from around a room to make the room usable again.

A fountain does not stop flowing when it is cluttered. It only becomes hard to reach. Things get stacked around it until a cup of water costs six moved obstacles, and the soul goes thirsty standing beside a working fountain. The supply was never the problem.

And her closing phrase — to God be the glory of His grace — is Ephesians 1:6, from the chapter she read yesterday: to the praise of the glory of His grace. It came back a day later in her own words, unlooked for.