DOING THINGS FOB CHRIST.
"We can best minister to him by helping them
Who dare not touch his hallowed garment's hem;
Their lives are even as ours--one piece, one plan.
Him know we not, him shall we never know,
Till we behold him in the least of these
Who suffer or who sin. In sick souls he
Lies bound and sighing, asks our sympathies;
Their grateful eyes thy benison bestow,
Brother and Lord,--'Ye did it unto me.'"
--LUCY LARCOM.
If Christ were here, we say, we would do many things for him. The
women who love him would gladly minister to him as did the women who
followed him from Galilee. The men who are his friends would work to
help him in any ways he might direct. The children who are trying to
please him would run errands for him. We all say we would be delighted
to serve him if only he would come again to our world and visit our
homes. But we can do things for him just as really as if he were here
again in human form.
One way of doing this is by obeying him. He is our Lord. Nothing
pleases him so well as our obedience. It is told of a great
philosopher that a friend called one day to see him, and was
entertained by the philosopher's little daughter till her father came
in. The friend supposed that the child of so wise a man would be
learning something very deep. So he asked her, "What is your father
teaching you?" The little maid looked up into his face with her clear
eyes and said, "Obedience." That is the one great lesson our Lord is
teaching us. He wants us to learn obedience. If we obey him always we
shall always be doing things for him.
We do things for Christ which we do through love to him. Even
obedience without love does not please him. But the smallest services
we can render, if love inspire them, he accepts. Thus we can make the
commonest tasks of our lives holy ministries, as sacred as what the
angels do. There is a legend of a monk who painted in an old
convent-cell pictures of martyrs and holy saints and of the sweet
Christ-face with the crown of thorns. Men called his pictures only
daubs.
"One night the poor monk mused, 'Could I but render
Honor to Christ as other painters do--
Were but my skill as great as is the tender
Love that inspires me when his cross I view.'
"'But no, 'tis vain I toil and strive in sorrow;
What man so scorns still less can _He_ admire;
My life's work is all valueless; to-morrow
I'll cast my ill-wrought pictures in the fire.'
"He raised his eyes within his cell--O wonder!
There stood a Visitor; thorn-crowned was He;
And a sweet voice the silence rent asunder:
'I scorn no work that's done for love of me.'
"And round the walls the paintings shone resplendent
With lights and colors to this world unknown,
A perfect beauty and a hue transcendent,
That never yet on mortal canvas shone."
There is a beautiful meaning in the old legend. Christ scorns no work
that is done for love of him. Most of us have much drudgery in our
lives, but even this we can make glorious by doing it through love for
Christ.
Things we do for others in Christ's name, are done for him. We all
remember that wonderful "inasmuch" in the twenty-fifth of Matthew. If
we find the sick one, or the poor one, and go and minister, as we may
be able, as unto the Lord, the deed is accepted as if done to him in
person. Mrs. Margaret J. Preston, in one of her beautiful poems, tells
of a weary sister who grieved sorely because, as it seemed to her, she
had not been able to do any work for Christ. By a mother's dying bed
she had promised to care for her little sister, and her work for the
child so filled her hands that she had not time for anything else. As
she grieved thus once, the little sister sleeping beside her stirred
and told her of a sweet, strange dream she had had. She thought her
sister was sitting sad because the King had bidden each one to bring
him a gift.
"And in my dream I saw you there,
And heard you say, 'No hands can bear
A gift, that are so filled with care.'
"What care?' the King said, and he smiled
To hear you answer, wailing wild,
'I only toil to feed a child.'
"And then with such a look divine
('Twas that awaked me with its shine),
He whispered, 'But the child is mine.'"
There are many for whom this little story-poem should have sweet
comfort. There are fathers and mothers who find it hard to provide for
their children. It takes all their time and strength, and sometimes
they say, "I cannot do any work for Christ, because it takes every
moment to earn bread and clothing for my little ones, and to care for
them." But Jesus whispers, "Yes; yet your children are mine, and what
you do for them you do for me."
There is in a home an invalid who requires all the time and thought of
another member of the household in loving attention. It may be an aged
parent needing the help of a child; it may be a child, crippled, blind,
or sick, needing all a parent's care; or it may be a brother broken in
health on whom a sister is called to wait continually with patient
love. And sometimes those who are required thus to spend their days
and nights in ministry for others feel that their lives count for
nothing in work for Christ. They hear the appeals for laborers and for
service, but cannot respond. Their hands are already filled. Yet
Jesus whispers, "These for whom you are toiling, caring, and spending
time and strength are mine, and in doing for them you are doing for me
just as acceptable work as are those who are toiling without
distraction or hindrance in the great open field."
Sometimes the work we do for Christ with purest love fails, or seems to
fail of result. Nothing appears to come of it. There are whole
lifetimes of godly people that seem to yield nothing. A word ought to
be said about this kind of doing for Christ. We are to set it down as
true without exception, that no work wrought in Christ's name and with
love for him is ever lost. What we, in our limited, short-sighted
vision, planned to do may not be accomplished, but God's purpose goes
on in every consecrated life, in every true deed done. The disciples
thought that Mary's costly ointment was wasted. So it seemed; but this
world has been a little sweeter ever since the breaking of the vase
that let the perfume escape into its common air. So it is with many
things that are done, and many lives that are lived. They seem to
fail, and there is nothing on the earth to show where they have been.
Yet somehow the stock of human happiness is larger and the world is a
little better.
Our work for Christ that fails in what we intended may yet leave a
blessing in some other way. A faithful Bible-class teacher through
many months visited a young man, a member of her class, in sickness.
She read the Bible to him and sang sweet hymns and prayed by his
bedside. He was not a Christian and she hoped that he would be led to
Christ. But at length he recovered and went out again, unchanged, or
even more indifferent than ever to his spiritual interests. All the
faithful teacher's work seemed to have been in vain. Then she learned
that a frail, invalid girl, living in an adjoining house, had been
brought to Christ through the loving work done for the careless
scholar. The songs sung by the sick man's bedside, and which seemed to
have left no blessing in his heart, had been heard through the thin
wall of the house in the girl's sick-room, and had told her of the love
of the Saviour.
The records of Christian ministry are full of such good work done
unintentionally. Failing to leave a blessing where it was hoped a
blessing would be received, it blessed some other life. We may not say
that any good work has failed until we know in the last great harvest
all the results of the things we have done and the words we have spoken.
"Not all who seem to fail have failed indeed;
Not all who fail have therefore worked in vain;
For all our acts to many issues lead;
And out of earnest purpose, pure and plain,
Enforced by honest toil of hand or brain,
The Lord will fashion in his own good time
(Be this the laborer's proudly humble creed),
Such ends as in his wisdom, fitliest chime
With his vast love's eternal harmonies.
There is no failure for the good and wise;
What though thy seed should fall by the wayside,
And the birds snatch it?--Yet the birds are fed;
Or they may bear it far across the tide,
To give rich harvests after thou art dead."
Many people die, and see yet no harvest from their life's sowing. They
come to the end of their years, and their hands are empty. But when
they enter heaven they will find that they have really been building
there all the while, that the things that have seemed to leave no
result on the earth have left glorious results inside the gates of
pearl.
"There is no end to the sky,
And the stars are everywhere,
And time is eternity,
And the here is over there;
For the common deeds of the common day
Are ringing bells in the far away."
Then even if the work we do does not itself leave any record, the doing
of it leaves a record--an impression--on our own life. There is a word
of Scripture which says, "He that doeth the will of God abideth
forever." Doing God's will builds up enduring character in us. Every
obedience adds a new touch of beauty to the soul. Every true thing we
do in Christ's name, though it leave no mark anywhere else in God's
universe, leaves an imperishable mark on our own life. Every deed of
unselfish kindness that we perform with love for Christ in our heart,
though it bless no other soul in all the world, leaves its sure
benediction on ourselves.
Thousands of years since a leaf fell on the soft clay and seemed to be
lost. But last summer a geologist in his ramblings broke off a piece
of rock with his hammer, and there lay the image of the leaf, with
every line, and every vein, and all the delicate tracery, preserved in
the stone through these centuries. So the words we speak, and the
things we do for Christ to-day, may seem to be lost, but in the great
final revealing the smallest of them will appear, to the glory of
Christ and the reward of the doer.