| The Joy of Service |
Chapter 1 |
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It is worth our while to try to find the secret of true and abiding Christian joy. We often hear it said that trust in god yields joy, or that a blameless life produces happiness. There is one kind of living, however, which more than any other contains the master secret of joy. It is a life of service. It begins in consecration to Christ: we must, first of all, be His servants. It includes trust, – reposing upon God. But there can be no continued quiet confidence if there be no activity in Christian life. Still water stagnates. Even trust without action soon loses its restfulness.
Work itself is always a helper of happiness. Indolence is never truly happy. The happiest man is the busy man. Even physical health depends largely upon regular occupation. No man, able for duty, who is not busy, can be truly or deeply happy. The idle man may be living a life of pleasure, but it is not a life of real happiness. Work is a condition of joy. It is a blessing that most people, when sorrow comes, dare not pause to indulge their grief. Their duties are waiting for them, waiting so clamorously that they cannot linger even for the tender sentiment of sorrow. There is scarcely time to wait for the funeral to be over, after a bereavement, before imperative tasks must receive attention. It is well that it is so. The necessary activity keeps the heart from breaking, and preserves the life from the morbidity which so often sorrow produces when the hands lie folded.
Work is therefore a secret of happiness. It saves the heart from being overcharged. The emotions which otherwise would lie pent up, to the hurt of the life, find vent and are wrought out in activities which bless others, while they produce health and wholesomeness in him who performs them. No worse mistake can be made by one in grief than to drop life’s duties and tasks out of the hands, and cut one’s self off from the common duties and ministries of life. God’s comfort is not found in this way. Joy comes not back to him who nourishes his sorrow in idle brooding; it is found only in the earnest and faithful doing of every duty. Work has saved many a life from despair in time of great grief.
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