| The Joy of Service |
Chapter 11 |
Page 5 |
Human friendships ofttimes fail for years to realize their richest possibilities, because there has been nothing to test their faithfulness or bring out their best. All this while they are only surface friendships, sincere and true, but not deep. Then some experience comes which demands the utmost that friendship can do in the way of service and sacrifice. The ordeal is past, the test has been made, friendship has not failed; it has kept nothing back in the time of need. And now the friendship grows to its holiest and best. It is no longer a mere surface attachment; heart has become knit to heart, life and life have blended in one.
It is thus also with the friendship of Christ. Many Christians go on for years with only a surface attachment for Him. It is no fault of theirs, perhaps. There has been nothing in their life to compel them into closer relation with Christ. They believe in Him as their Saviour, they take His promises and lean on them, they accept his commandments as the law of their life and obey them; but they have never learned to know Christ as their personal friend. By and by something happens which compels them to trust Him in the darkness, – to trust everything to Him. In the deep need the sore stress, or the great sorrow, when the friendship of Christ is put to the proof, it does not fail. After that Christ means more to the heart than He ever meant before. He becomes a friend as well as a Saviour. His love flows about them and fills their heart. They have really found Christ anew – have found a new Christ.
We dread the hard things in life, – the burdens, the crosses, the responsibilities, the loss of earthly good, the pinching times, the struggles, the sorrows; but really, if we are Christians, these are life’s best things, because they become revealers of spiritual blessing. The Beatitudes illustrate this. “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst”; “Blessed are they that mourn”; “Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for My sake.” The world would never write beatitudes for such experiences as these. It puts these experiences down among the misfortunes of life. What is the Christian secret of blessing in these ways? It is not that tears and hunger and reviling are good in themselves, but that they bring us to points in life where we find spiritual food. As night reveals the stars, so do these experiences reveal the Divine meanings of the words of Scripture; and as through our necessities we discover the golden qualities of our human friendships, so through the sterner and harder things of life we find the richest blessings of the friendships of Christ.
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