| The Joy of Service |
Chapter 13 |
Page 7 |
No other one ever suffered such wrongs as did Jesus; but the hurts He bore never reached His soul, left no woundings there. When He was reviled, He reviled not again, but kept forgiveness in His heart. He gave love for hate. They pierced His hands with nails; but the only cry the pain wring from Him was a prayer for His enemies and the blood from the cruel wounds became the blood of redemption. Paul is another example of the powerlessness of hatred and injury to harm a soul. He endured untold suffering, was beaten, stoned, imprisoned, tortured; but you will search the records in vain for one word of bitterness or resentment. His heart remained sweet through the worst that human hate and rage could do.
That is an important lesson, and one that every Christian should learn. We are always in danger of allowing ourselves to be embittered by injustice or cruel treatment. When we have sought to do good to others, and our love has been despised, rejected, and cast away; when we have suffered and sacrificed in vain, receiving only ingratitude and unkindness in return for love’s most sacred gifts, freely lavished, – it is easy to permit our heart to lose its tenderness, and to grow hard and misanthropic. Then it is that life has wrought damage to our spirit that we have sinned against our own soul. The problem of Christian living is to pass through any and every possible experience of pain, loss, sorrow, temptation, or wrong, uninjured, with spirit sweet, peaceful, wholesome, loving, and unimpaired.
Page 7