The Oil Shall Not Be Stayed — New Every Morning, Fresh Every Evening

Spurgeon's second sentence is an allusion, and it repays knowing. As long as there is a vessel of grace not yet full to the brim, the oil shall not be stayed.

He is pointing at 2 Kings 4. A widow, in debt, with nothing in the house but one small jar of oil. Elisha tells her: borrow empty vessels from all your neighbours — and do not borrow few. She shuts the door and begins to pour, and the oil keeps coming, jar after jar.

Then the sentence that is the whole point: "Bring me another vessel." And he said, "There is not another vessel." So the oil ceased.

The oil did not run out. The jars ran out. The flow stopped at the limit of what had been brought to it, and not one drop before. The supply was never the constraint.

Which is exactly what Le said eleven days ago, in her own words: how we tend to clutter the fountain that flows from God and His Son, freely. Spurgeon and the widow and Le are all saying one thing. The limit is never on His side.

In the middle of that page Spurgeon writes a line that has closed every entry in this journal: His mercies are new every morning. Ninety-one pages have ended on it. And he hands over the half we did not have: and fresh every evening.

He is filling in something Lamentations leaves implied — and five days ago this journal found the reason it works. Genesis 1:5: there was evening, and there was morning — the first day. The biblical day begins at sundown.

So the two halves are not decorative. Fresh every evening is the mercy that meets you when the day starts — in the dark, before anything has gone right. New every morning is the mercy waiting when the light comes. The supply is posted at both ends, and the first shift is the night one.

Which is a fitting word on the first morning this journal has not been written in a flat. Last night was the first night out of the apartment. Spurgeon says the mercy was already there for it.

Spurgeon's images are all of supply that does not depend on the recipient: a sun ever-shining, manna falling round the camp, rain always dropping, a river ever-flowing. None of them can be earned and none can be hurried.

But look closely at one: a rock in the desert, ever sending out streams of life from his smitten side.

Exodus 17. No water, a whole nation complaining, and God tells Moses to strike a rock. Water comes out of stone. And Paul, writing about that wilderness, says something startling: they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ.

Spurgeon's phrase smitten side is doing double duty and he knows it. The rock was struck once, and the water came. And the striking is not repeated — the flowing is.

Read what Paul actually forbids. Not being rich. Not owning. He forbids two things: being haughty, and trusting in uncertain riches. The problem is not the possession. It is where the hope is resting.

And the Greek behind uncertain riches is more pointed than English usually renders it — literally, the uncertainty of riches. Not riches which happen to be uncertain, as if that were an unfortunate feature. Uncertainty is what they are made of. The Segond keeps the edge: des richesses incertaines.

Then the clause that keeps the verse from becoming grim. God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy. Qui nous donne avec abondance toutes choses pour que nous en jouissions.

Paul uses the word rich on both sides of the sentence. There are rich men, whose riches are uncertain — and there is a God who gives richly. This is not a call to austerity. He is not asking anyone to want less. He is telling them where the reliable abundance is kept.

And to enjoy is not a small word to find in a warning about money. God's stated purpose in giving is enjoyment. Not merely survival, not merely usefulness. The Giver intends His gifts to be had gladly.

This verse arrives at a household that has just emptied a home. Furniture given to a family of immigrants with two children and a few suitcases. The bed and the table last of all. And then the door closed.

Paul's warning has nothing left to warn about here. The hope was not in any of it, and the proof is that it all went out the door to somebody who needed it. The verse is not a rebuke this morning. It is a confirmation.

And it explains why the giving was possible at all. Nobody hands over their furniture while their hope is resting on it. The releasing came after the hope had already moved. Le has been saying it for two weeks in six different ways: home is where I am.

Spurgeon ends by turning on himself. O that my praise could be as ceaseless as his bounty! O miserable tongue, how canst thou be silent?

He has just spent a page cataloguing an unbroken flow of mercy, and the comparison shames him. The giving never stops; the thanking does. And he does not excuse himself on grounds of being busy or tired.

Then he quotes David: "Awake, psaltery and harp: I myself will awake right early." Réveille-toi, mon âme! réveillez-vous, mon luth et ma harpe! Je réveillerai l'aurore.

The French carries something the English loses. Je réveillerai l'aurore — I will wake the dawn. Not I will get up early. I will be up before it is, and I will be the one who wakes it.

Which is what ninety-one mornings have quietly been. Not a duty performed at dawn. Someone up first, waking the day with a book open.

Look again at the pictures Spurgeon chose. Manna always falling round the camp. A rock in the desert.

Neither is an image of settled life. Manna fell on people living in tents who did not know how long they would be there. The rock was struck for a nation between one place and another, out of water, with the destination still a long way off. Spurgeon reached for the wilderness to describe how grace behaves — and the page arrived on the morning Le woke in a motorhome.

And the manna is the detail worth holding this week. It could not be stored. Kept overnight it spoiled; only the Sabbath portion held. Which forced a whole nation to receive daily what it could not stockpile — the same lesson as the fountain, taught in a desert with breakfast.

The apartment is behind them. The papers are not signed. Brittany is not yet a place they live. This is the tent, and Scripture has more to say about tents than about houses. By faith he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents... for he waited for the city which has foundations.

And her thanksgiving answers Spurgeon's own closing rebuke. He asks O miserable tongue, how canst thou be silent? On the first morning without an address, she was not. We thank God for everything, and for every protection He has provided.