| Finding the Way |
Chapter 13 |
Page 4 |
When Christ becomes really the one thing of our lives, there is less and less of living for self, and more and more of consecration to the service of love. Some people suppose that holiness separates a man from his fellows, that as he becomes really like Christ he grows out of touch and sympathy with people, less interested in their human affairs, less gentle, less kindly, less human, less accessible, and less helpful. But it is not the religion of Christ that produces such results. Never did any other man get so near to people as Christ Himself did. He lived among them; they loved Him and trusted Him, and they told Him everything. When Christ truly enters a man, one of the unmistakable marks of His indwelling is the new love that begins to appear in the man’s life. His religion made Saint Paul a friend of man, eager to help everyone he met. When Christ really gets possession of a heart, the sweet flowers of love begin to grow in the life. If we are not becoming more patient, more glad hearted, more charitable, more kindly, more thoughtful, if there is not in us an increasing desire to help other, to do them good, we need to pray for more of the love of God in our hearts. We may tell people that Christ is still in this world, coming close to them in their needs, but He is here only as He lives in us. He has no other present incarnation but in the lives of His friends. He helps the suffering, the toiling folk, the hungry hearted, the weak, the sorrowing, but only through us. We are likest to Christ when we are nearest to the hearts of men when our sympathies are widest, when we are the gentlest, when our hands are readiest to minister.
If in our hearts the great master purpose to live for Christ only, we will grow continually away from all that is worldly and unworthy, toward things that are spiritual and Divine. Saint Paul describes himself as forgetting the things that are behind and stretching forward to the things that are before. Some people never leave anything behind them. At least, they forget nothing that they should forget. They never forget an injury. They never outgrow childish things.
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