“Behold, your house is like unto you desolate.” Matthew 23:38
Have you ever seen a desolate house? An old house with the windows broken out and the wind whistling through them? The shutters that remain are swinging to and fro in the wind, weeds have grown high in the yard, and the rusty gate is hanging onto its remaining hinge. A house that is open to the summer heat and the winters cold with no one to care for it.
What is the cause of all this desolation—was this house built to be desolate? Ah, no, it was never intended that this house should be desolate, but desolate it is. What then is the reason?
The real reason is that it is empty. An unoccupied house soon goes to ruin, very soon gets out of repair. It is not necessary that destructive persons should come and tear down, though this sometimes happens. It is only necessary for the house to remain empty long enough, for desolation to set in. But time conquers all things, and after a time, even the strongest and best cared for works of men must crumble and decay.
So with our lives, they were never intended to be desolate. Not to be at the mercy of every wind of circumstance, depending, as some men think, in a great measure, on what men call “luck” or fortune.
No, these lives of ours were and are intended to be real lives—life more abundantly—filled with light, joy and peace that passeth all understanding. Why is there desolation in the lives of men and women on every hand?
For the same reason that the house became desolate: they are empty, and rusty lives become desolate. You do not have to be old to be desolate. You just have to be empty. “He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life” John 5:12.
Have you the Son of God abiding within by the power of His Spirit? If you have not, there is an empty place in your life that only He can fill, and that emptiness will bring desolation—try and fill your life with what you will, but that empty place remains.
Jesus offered himself to His generation, but they would not. Will you? If you will accept Him, accept His blood as an atonement for your sins. He will enter your life and fill it with himself and will give to you that “abundant life” which he came into the world to give you.
There is much desolation in the world today, and it is all because men and women “have not the Son.” And they have not the Son, because they have refused Him saying, “We will not have this man to reign over us.”
Reader, the time comes in every life that they here must decide whom they will serve. This is a choice that you must make. See that you refuse not Him that speaketh. “For if they escaped not who refused Him that spake on earth; much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from Him that speaketh from heaven” (Hebrews 12:25).
Reader, we shall not escape, you shall not escape. There is no escape. God grant that your choice may be to accept the blood as an atonement for your soul and that your house (life) may not be left unto you desolate.
Thomas and Hannah Lowe in Colombia
Thomas Ernest Lowe delivered this message to assemblies in Maryland in the early 1930’s before leaving long-term for the mission field in Colombia in 1936.
Mr. Lowe, an able and zealous minister, seeing the great abundance of Gospel opportunity for North Americans and realizing the scarcity of that same opportunity for millions in South America, set out in the 1930’s for Colombia, to survey the spiritual landscape, and was joined there by his wife, Hannah. They worked together until Mr. Lowe, still a relatively young and most vigorous man, died in the capital city of Bogotá in 1941. Mrs. Lowe, vibrant in service to her Lord until her final days, died at Jerusalem in June 1983, having spent a year in the beloved City.