T he children are asleep. Your husband’s head droops over his magazine. You rally your drowsy wits for a survey of the day. Was it chaos or control? Acci dent or accomplishment? No matter. You have a good night’s sleep ahead of you. Relaxation, comfort, and warmth are yours—on that engineering masterpiece of springs and padding called a bed. You know from the ads that “ tomorrow morning will be as good as your mattress.” In inland China you can sleep on a king-sized bed with a built-in heater. Such luxury in the heart of the Orient? Yes, the bed is eight by six feet and charcoal heated, but it has a brick platform, and is not a beautyrest. No mattress covered its hard surface. A wadded quilt called a pugai was folded so that two layers came under the sleepers and one layer was on top. The whole family slept together, between the folds of the pugcd. Day’s end, for the tired wife, meant an uneasy sleep on this hard brick bed, the kang, in close company with the rest of the family. And the tang-makers gave np guarantee against morning backache! During the winter months, bitter blizzards sweep across the plains of Central China. Weary wife had no electric blanket to turn on. The cook built a charcoal fire in the hearth under the brick bed. A ll night the charcoal smoldered, warming the surface of the kang to oven heat. A night on a kang is a long series of wakings and turns. When you get too hot on the bottom side, just nudge your fellow sleepers. “Roll over,” is the order, and all turn in unison. But before long the “ down” side is fried and the up side frozen again. After a night on a bed like that, how good would your morning be? No matter how often they flipped over, they always awoke feeling like “ unturned pan cakes.” The Lord uses this very picture to describe Israel when in Hosea 7:8 He says, “Ephraim is a cake not turned.” A half-baked, unturned cake is such a disappointment. Have you ever smelled some delicious pastry and bitten into it only to discover that it was soggy, uncooked and inedible? Israel was that kind of disappointment to Jehovah. The outward form of their religious observance was carefully developed, but they never exposed their hearts to the warmth of God’s love. They had never been converted. Conversion means turning to God from sin. They were a cake not turned. After a winter’s night on a hard hot kang, with shrill winds whistling through the wax-paper windows, I was often challenged to ask myself, “Am I spiritually as half-baked and out-of-sorts as I feel physically? Or am I turning all phases of my life to the irradiation and warmth of Christ’s purifying love?” The question confronts me again these days as I relish those last morning minutes in a comfortable American bed. “Is my spiritual well-being keeping pace with my physical comfort? Am I living ‘to the praise of His glory?’ Or is my life tasteless, lukewarm and inedible?” By the grace of God, my wife and I had many morn ings in China that were better than our bed. For the Lord showed us a source of energy much more reliable than the soundest sleep. . . In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength . . (Isaiah 30:15). The mattress companies quarantee comfort, support, and refreshed mornings. Our God promises strength and spiritual attractiveness if we will take our “ beauty rest” in a quiet inner reliance upon His love. “ Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him . . (Psalm 37:7). Good night . . .! THE KING'S BUSINESS
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