| Finding the Way |
Chapter 10 |
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The abundant life may not have money to give, and yet it may fill a whole community with blessings. It may go out with sympathy, with comfort, with inspirations of cheer and hope, and may make countless hearts braver and stronger. We do not know the value of the ministry, the influence upon others, of a strong, pure, peaceful, victorious face. A Hindu woman met on the street a missionary who could not speak her language and said not a word to her. He only looked into her face and pointed upward. She hastened home and said that she had seen an angel of heaven. The glory of God shone on the missionary’s countenance. We do not know when the joy and the love in our faces may put new hope into fainting hearts, and make men able to win the victory over depression or despondency, or over a great temptation.
The secret of abundant helpfulness is fond in the desire to be a help, a blessing, to all we meet. One wrote to a bereft mother of her little one who had gone to heaven: “Gratia was in our home only once when but five years of age, and yet the influence of her brief stay has been filling every day since in all these three years, especially in the memory of one little sentence which was continually on the child’s lips wherever she went, ‘Can I help thee?’” We begin to be like Christ only when we begin to wish to be helpful. Where this desire is ever dominant, the life is an unceasing benediction. Rivers of water are pouring out from it continually to bless the world. One friend could say to another–
“I never crossed your threshold with a grief
But that I went without it; never came
Heart hunger, but you fed me, eased the blame,
And gave the sorrow solace and relief.
“I never left you but I took away
The love that drew me to your side again
Through that wide door that never could remain
Quite closed between us for a little day.”
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