Return, O Wanderer, Return!

Are there things in one’s spiritual life, that you always seem to be going to sort out, attend to, be obedient under God to, “tomorrow”? Yet, tomorrow, always remains tomorrow? We are told in Scripture to redeem the time well, and that includes not putting off to tomorrow what we can or should do today. Because, even if bursting full of health and vitality today, no one in even that condition can grantee they will have a tomorrow. No one has any certainty that when we go to sleep tonight, we will wake up in the same bed tomorrow morning to go about our day and be pilgrims on earth.

Oliver Cromwell is a somewhat intriguing and fascinating character in history. Folk seem to either love him or hate him; he is either viewed as a great man of God; or a tyrannical megalomania. I be live Cromwell maybe one of those figures in history that over time, the truth has so many different versions that we may never really know the truth about Cromwell the man, the Christian in our age, beyond speculation or guess work.

However, I did read something interesting regarding Cromwell, where he himself on his deathbed, more or less stated he had fallen from grace.

Cromwell died on September 3rd, 1658, and on his death bed he had this conversation with his chaplain.

Cromwell: Tell me, is it possible to fall from grace?

Chaplin: No, it is not possible.

Cromwell: Then I am safe, for I know that I was once in grace.

Yet we know that people can have what to all appearances are true conversions, yet they are temporary and they fall away, they are not savingly converted. So one cannot be sure that Cromwell’s security or assurance was well founded.
However, his words indicate that he had been aware for some time at the state of his declension, and reading the below by Octavius Winslow, wonders if he was like the prodigal, only in the excerpt below, the prodigal only meant to return, yet never quite did:

Too Many rest in a mere deploring of their barrenness ; they will ingenuously acknowledge their state, freely confess It before God and yet meet them When you will, this is always their posture, and thus their confession. One seems to mark in them no advance, no striving after higher attainments, the Crucifixion of known Infirmities, the mortification of easy besetting Sin. the surrender of that which feedeth as a worm upon the rest of the religion There just seems like an Consciousness enough to detect the Secret declension of the Soul, but not enough to arrest its progress
–Octavius Winslow

you see we really do need to do today, what we ought and should do, and not put it off until a “tomorrow” that never quite arrives.

Return, O wanderer, return!
And seek an injured Father’s face;
Those warm desires that in thee burn,
Were kindled by reclaiming grace.

Return, O Wanderer, return!
Thy Saviour bids Thy spirit live;
Go to His bleeding side and learn,
How freely Jesus can forgive.

Return, O wanderer, return!
Regain thy lost, lamented rest;
Jehovah’s melting bowels yearn,
To clasp His Ephraim to His breast.”
–Octavius Winslow