Reflection on Today’s Reading
Zephaniah 3:4-20
Those who have ever known that sense of repose too deep for words—the thought which feels that, by any expression of itself it would only mar its own intensity—would understand the beauty of the fact, that the sentence which we have translated, “He will rest in His love,” is more literally still, “He will be silent in His love.” For there is rest beyond language, whose very eloquence it is that it cannot choose but to be silent.
Notice, on what the love of God really lies. It lies, first, on that eternity, in which you may go back for ever, and never find the moment when it began. It lies, secondly, on the vast sacrifice of Christ, and the immensity of the value of the comprehensiveness of the atoning work It lies, thirdly, on the breadth of the atonement. And it lies, fourthly, on all those attributes which go to make its own great name; and which have been gathered by the grace which is in Christ Jesus into the one prerogative of love.