No matter how earnestly we may love our life-calling, and rejoice in
our chosen field of activity, there are hours when the easiest task
becomes irksome and its daily repetition seems unbearable. However
healthy the soul and robust the moral nature, a constant onslaught of
sorrow may wound like a poisoned dart, filling the soul with painful
forebodings. Beholding the transitoriness of life, and the apparent
frailty and uncertainty of those things upon which we place our
heaviest dependence, we become depressed, and feel that nothing is
permanent and that life’s products are but empty shadows. These are
common experiences, and their frequent repetition does not lessen their
depressive power. Coming upon us to-day they are just as hurtful as
when they challenged us for the first time.
That we may overcome these disagreeable tendencies, and live a life
victorious, Paul revealed the secret of his own achievements. To him
work never became drudgery, sorrow never festered or left a feverish
wound, while even the most commonplace incident was of the deepest
significance because he had learned to acquire and maintain a deep
perspective that placed each moment of time in the white light of
eternity. He believed that we are not created for the hour but for the
centuries, and that we must work not so much for the present hour as
for the years that are yet to be. The one purpose of every word and
deed, to Paul, was to “show the ages to come the exceeding riches of
God’s grace.”
As the prolific and luxuriant vegetation of the carboniferous age
bordered the lakes with ferns, the rivers with reeds, and the hillsides
and valleys with gigantic trees of grotesque form, that, in the ages to
come, man might have the exhaustless coalbeds to protect him from the
cold; as the coral polyps, buried beneath the waves, love and labor and
die, generation after generation, until a coral island lifts its head
to receive the kisses of the passing waves and extend the arms of a
protecting harbor, that, in the ages to come, the storm-tossed mariners
may find safe shelter against the stormy wind and wave; so you and I
are to love, and labor, and die, not for ourselves, but that the ages
to come, through our goodness and fidelity, may behold the riches of
God’s grace.
This does not mean that we are to so bury the present in the future
that our lives shall consist of nothing save vague dreams and
idle contemplations. It means the opposite. We are to magnify the
present and give it increasing value by crowding it with an eternal
significance. We are not to drop to-day into the silent ocean of the
future and see it fade from sight, but into to-day we are to crowd
to-morrow and all the other to-morrows that shall follow. Instead of
losing the drop of water in Niagara we are to crowd all the dash and
splendor and power of Niagara into the single drop of water; instead
of losing the dew in the ocean, we crowd the ocean into the dewdrop;
instead of burying the present into the future, we gather all eternity
and crowd it into a single lifetime, so that every second of time
becomes as precious as a thousand years of eternity, and the smallest
task we have to perform becomes as sacred as the songs of the angels.
When one possesses this conception of life that crowds a vast eternity
within the compass of a single individual life, no toil can ever become
drudgery. Every deed has divine significance. The most ordinary task
will be performed carefully, knowing that it must stand the scrutiny
and criticisms of the passing centuries. We labor then with the various
elements of life, as the artists of Venice toil with their priceless
mosaics, willing to spend a lifetime of painstaking endeavor in
forming a single feature of a saint, knowing that long after they
themselves have ceased to toil the wisdom of untold centuries shall
review their efforts to either praise or blame. Hitherto we have
despised the commonplace things that fell to our hands, while we
busied ourselves searching for some great thing worthy of our effort,
with the result that nothing has been accomplished; now we find, that
that only is truly great which is commonplace. Divine opportunities
are everywhere. In the low-browed man upon the street we see the
possibility of an ennobled and redeemed humanity. In the waif, crying
from hunger, we see the center of world-wide and eternal destinies.
Words are winged messengers, so we learn to study them with care, and
speak them with the precision with which a musician strikes his chords.
Divine destinies are depending upon the perfection with which we toil,
adding a charm to every endeavor that never fades with weariness. There
can be no drudgery to him who has a perspective eternity long.
This conception of life which Paul gives us will carry us unharmed
through all the misfortunes of life. It is impossible for us to escape
sorrow. By rigid economy we may save our money only to have it stolen
by a deceitful friend; we may build a home, only to find it purchased
and occupied by another; loved ones, more precious than our own lives,
have been lured from our side by the hand of death. These hours are
naturally dark and of tortuous length, and if it were not for the fact
that we have learned to think in terms of eternity, we would die of a
broken heart. But we do not die; we pass through them with triumphant
tread. The soul sobs but does not bleed; the heart hurts but does
not break. We are not living for this world alone; our horizon has
been widened because we have been lifted to a higher level; we can
now see two worlds; our faith sweeps onward as far as God can think.
The earthly home for which we planned and toiled has passed into the
hands of another, but we rejoice in the knowledge that we have a home,
not made with toiling, blistered hands of earth, but one eternal in
the heavens. Our loved ones no longer greet us at the table or occupy
their accustomed places in the family circle, but we have not lost them
forever. They have simply passed from time into eternity, and because
we also are the children of eternity, they are still our own, and we
shall see them once again. Thank God for the transforming power that
comes into every human life when, by divine aid, one crowds eternal
significance into his days, and works, not for himself, but for “the
ages to come.”
Paul’s view of life enables us to find perfect satisfaction in working
with the frailties of time in building that which is immortal in
character and service. Possessed with such a purpose, the spider’s
web becomes a cable, dust becomes slabs of marble, and seconds
becomes decades. There is nothing more fragile than a word, spoken in
stammering weakness, but with a trembling desire to be of service,
yet out of one word fitly spoken may be created an influence that
sweeps heaven and earth. A faltering word of Christian testimony was
spoken by a godly man made weak by an unconquerable embarrassment,
but his utterance proved mighty. Lodging in the heart of Charles
Spurgeon, it started him on his wonderful career that is yet shaking
all Christendom. The smile of the face is far more delicate than
the frailest blossom that opens its soft petals in obedience to the
caressing influence of the sun, for its existence is but for the
fraction of a second; yet one kindly, love-illumined look has been the
force that has lifted multitudes of mortals out of despondency and
uselessness, and made them the creators of mighty moral and religious
forces. It was a smile that saved John G. Wooley for the cause of
temperance. A smile, and a word, and the gift of a handkerchief were
all that Frances E. Willard used to redeem one of the most notorious
characters of Chicago, and make her one of God’s ministers of light
among the fallen.
When one learns to live with the light of eternity flooding his pathway
there is not an event in life so small and insignificant that he
cannot employ it to create, and afterward use it, to sustain eternal
influences. There is joy now in living for Christ, but let us live,
not for that joy alone, but that, in the ages to come, we may show the
exceeding riches of God’s grace. Let them, through us, behold what the
grace of God can do to save, to keep, to empower, and to make immortal
such sin-smitten ones as we have been. This is the secret for making
toil pleasant, sorrows helpless, and the humblest effort an enterprise
of such character as crowds earth with richer meaning, and fills the
heavens with new-found joys. Show them that the greatest of all known
forces is a Christ-filled life.