Exodus 12:2

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you." Exodus 12:2 .

God is the Ruler of time. We do not invent years and months and weeks. These are really, when searched into, the creations and appointments of the Divine power. New days are new opportunities. New days enable us to forget the evil of all yesterdays. Consider the dawning year in this light, and the opening day. The true birthday of a man is the day on which his soul was born into a purer and nobler life. A birthday may be determined by a vow. The birthday of the body is the poorest of all anniversaries. When the great idea entered the mind, inspiring and ennobling it, and filling it with Divine enthusiasm, the man was truly born. We are entitled to date our existence from our regeneration, otherwise our memory might become an intolerable torment Regeneration destroys the recollections of remorse. Man is breaking a Divine ordinance when he goes beyond the day of his recreation, and insists upon making alive again all the iniquities that corrupted and degraded his earliest life. Beautiful is the word beginning. It is one of the first words in the Bible. God himself alone could have invented that word. It is a dewy term; it is tender with the brightness of morning; it is beautiful with the bloom of heaven; a very holy and most helpful word. Blessed is the man who knows he has begun his life again, and who can confidently date his best existence from a point in time which separates him from every evil and accusing memory.