| The Joy of Service |
Chapter 23 |
Page 5 |
Of course you do not today have the particular grace your friend has. With the grace you are now receiving you might not be able to endure sickness patiently. Your present grace is grace for earnest, active life, for living sweetly amid trial and care, for doing well life’s common duties. It would be a waste of Divine grace for God to give you now strength to meet anguish or sorrow, when you have neither anguish nor sorrow to endure. If by and by God shall lead you into a chamber of suffering, then you may expect grace to meet the new experiences.
A mother reads the story of some other mother whose little child was taken up to God. This mother in her great sorrow did not rebel, but laid her darling in Christ’s arms just as sweetly as if she were only bringing it to Him for His blessing. “I could not do that,” says this mother of the happy, living child. “I have not grace enough to give up my child, even to Christ, as my friend gave up hers.”
But why should she have this grace today, when her child is in health? Her duty for it now is not laying it in Christ’s arms in death, and then going on, bereft and lonely, yet rejoicing, but rather training it for Christ; and for this duty of Christian motherhood she will receive the needed grace if she seeks it. Then if, some painful day, God asks her to let her child be taken away to heaven, she will receive grace to give it up to Him, and to walk on in sweet faith without its companionship.
Page 5