| Finding the Way |
Chapter 10 |
Page 5 |
That is what might be the ministry of every one of us to others, to all who turn to us with their needs, their loneliness, their heart hungers, their sorrows. We should always have bread in our hands to give to those who are hungry, and cheer for those who come to us fainting and disheartened. Life is but another way of spelling love. It is more love we want when we cry out for the abundant life. Nothing but love will answer the great human needs about us. Nothing else will make people happier and better. The abundant life Christ came to give is simply fullness of love in the heart, pulsing out in all the veins.
How can we have this abundance of life? Most of us are conscious of the poverty and thinness of our spiritual life. We are not strong – we faint easily under our burdens and in our struggles. We are not living victoriously – we are defeated continually, and overcome by everything that assails us, by the smallest antagonism and opposition. We are not perennial fountains of love, sending out streams of the water of life for the refreshing and the renewing of the dreary places about us. At the best of streams of kindness and beneficence flow in our lives only intermittently. We have not much to give to the needy, hungry world that looks to us for cheer and strength. Men ask bread of us, and all we have to give them is a stone. The come expecting fruit, and find nothing but leaves. We are not so full of Christ that those who touch the hem of our garments feel the thrill of life in them and are healed and are made happier and better. Our spirits are not so charged with the love of God that our shadow, as we pass along the way, heals those on whom it falls. Our hearts are not so overflowing with a passion for being of use, that we involuntarily, unconsciously, impart to every one we meet some helpfulness, some comfort, some inspiration, and some good.
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