Luke 10:18

A TRUE SENSE OF PROPORTION

‘And He said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.’

Luke 10:18

Let us seek honestly to imitate our Master, and look upon our world as He looked upon this earth, when as from a position in eternity He saw Satan fall from heaven.

I. If we look upon our own lives as one looks back upon a way already trodden, and a work already accomplished, we shall gain a truer sense of the proportion of things. This true sense of proportion in life is hard for us to keep in the nearness of present things; yet it is essential to large, happy living that we should gain and keep it. Whenever we shall be far enough out in eternity to look back and see our lives as one whole, we shall understand better God’s grouping of events in them.

II. In so far as we can put ourselves in the exercise of our own faiths beyond this life, we shall gain in many respects a different, and in all a more just, estimate of our own real attainments. We shall see more clearly what we may expect to win for ourselves from life.

III. Only as we strive to throw ourselves forward into the life beyond, and to consider our whole existence here as it is in its relation to the man and his life then and there, can we form a safe estimate of the worth of things.