| The Joy of Service |
Chapter 1 |
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The greatest and highest of all beings is God Himself. His is the life which had no beginning, and shall have no ending. All other life – all angel life, all human life – flows from the one great fountain. Yet God lives not for Himself. God is love, and the very essence of love is always service. He is ever giving out blessing and good to men. Every revealing of God shows Him to us as a God who serves His creatures. He thinks ever of their good. He works continually in providence, in most thoughtful, gentle serving. The highest reach of the Divine serving was in the incarnation, when God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.
Then, in the story of the life of Christ, where we have the revealing of the Divine character in all its beauty, we find the most wonderful serving. Never did any other man live for his friends as Jesus lived for His. He kept nothing back from them. On the last night of His life, as if to express His love in a way that never could be forgotten, we see Him clad as a servant, washing His disciples’ feet. No picture of Jesus in all the Gospels is truer to the very heart of His life than this. He came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. He took on Him the form of a servant, to show the Divine spirit. A little later He actually gave His life in his matchless service of love. Thus this divinest of all ideals of life is seen serving even unto the uttermost.
We know that in this serving Jesus found deep and holy joy. It used to be taught that He was a sad man. There was a tradition that He never smiled. But this conception of Jesus could not have been true. He was indeed a man of sorrows, but there was in His heart a deep joy which even His sorrows could not quench. He spoke distinctly and repeatedly of His joy and of His peace. One of the New Testament writers tells us that is was for the joy set before Him that He endured the cross, despising the shame.
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