05.04 The use of opportunites of service
IV. THE USE OF OPPORTUNITIES OF SERVICE
Consider finally, and chiefly, the use of our opportunities for active service in the Kingdom of God. There is no question that by our baptism our life stands under the pledge of service. It is not the privilege of the few, but the duty of all. The living Christ is ever in the van of all efforts to rescue and redeem the world, and every Christian must be there at His side. He cannot be “in Christ” sharing his victory without being “with Christ” sharing the toil of His service. No man can be in the true sense a Christian who does not know and keep some definite place in the labours of Christ’s Kingdom. For some talent, some opportunity of influence, some chance of work we all possess. God never set any man in any part of His universe without setting some opportunity of service at his side.
Whatever it may be, we are to begin there and work in a great spirit.
What is wanting is not the work, but the vigilance to see it, the readiness to welcome it, the eagerness to do it. Men are so apt to plead “I am so unimportant; my gifts are so few; I am beset by temptations; I find it hard enough to keep my own life straight.” But such excuses only echo the plea of the slothful servant; and they lead to the outer darkness. Or, when we have undertaken some work, we are so easily depressed and discomfited. “The difficulties are too great; the failures are manifest; there seems to be no result; it is not worth while to go on struggling with the impossible for ever!” Thus, we lose hope and energy and vigilance for new chances, and readiness for new ventures, and sink back into some mere routine of duty, where at least we are within the region of the possible. But in God’s sight the worth of our life is never the success which it secures, but always the spirit which it puts forth. We are better men if we fail in a high endeavour than if we succeed in a meagre one. The great thing is to be up and doing, to be strengthening the world’s hard upward course, and resisting its easy downward course, by the resolute output of faith and effort.
There are many signs that we have come to a time in the history of God’s Kingdom when it is just the acts of quiet, individual, personal service which are specially needed. We have too long entrusted the work of the Kingdom to particular classes, such as the clergy, to schemes and societies, and all sorts of public organizations. The comparative failure of these public and official efforts must compel us to summon a power higher and stronger than any which they possess the power of personal influence. Never was charity so widespread and enthusiastic, but alas! at least in our great cities, it has done almost as much to degrade as it has done to raise the poor. And why?
Because it has neglected the one really strong power of uplifting personal care and thought and persistence. We are anxious, in the midst of endless controversies, as to the future of religious education in our schools. Is not this very anxiety meant to send us back to Cod’s own appointed school, the home, and to His own appointed teachers, the parents, that we may make both efficient?
Here then it is in this region of small things and personal efforts, of single talents, that we are to make our ventures of faith.
There is no truth more wonderfully borne out by experience than that the one talent when put out to trade in a spirit of faith and prayer grows in value. Almost all the great movements which have revived religion and relieved the poverty and suffering of this world have arisen, as the parable of the mustard-seed taught us, from small beginnings used in a courageous and faithful spirit. To come to a humbler level, could any opportunity of service seem less than that of a poor mechanic, condemned for long years to his bed by a distressing and incurable illness? Yet I have known such a man make his sick-room the centre of a remarkable and widespread spiritual influence among all classes of men, and collect in a single year, while he himself for his own wants depended partly on poor relief, more than one hundred pounds for the work of Christ’s Church. These surely are the servants whom the King delights to honour. There are two surprises one may venture to think which await us in the day when the Lord returns to make His reckoning with His servants. One, the place of honour given to plain, simple men and women, who put a great spirit of service into humble opportunities; the other, the open and tragic shame of multitudes of feeble, self-centred, respectable people, who buried their talents in dull and complacent routine. In the spiritual world, the path of ease and safety is the path of peril for, in the noble words of Samuel Rutherford, “the safest way, I am persuaded, is to tyne* and win with Christ, and to hazard fairly for Him; for heaven is but a company of noble venturers for Christ.”
TAGS: [Parables]