The Qualification for Ministering

“Looking up to heaven, He sighed, and saith unto him Ephphatha, that is, Be opened.” — Marx vii. 34.

SUCH was the state of mind in which Jesus approached an afflicted human soul. It is

the typical state of all true philanthropists. It is a double consciousness — a blending of pain and hope. I read that before beginning the cure Jesus “sighed”; that was an experience of pain. But I am told that the sigh was simultaneous with an upward glance, “looking up to heaven”; that was an experience of hope. Can pain and hope exist side by side? Yes, if they form part of one building. And they do so here. They are the two pillars of compassion. No act of charity can be successful without each of them — pain and hope — the sigh and the upward gaze. There can be no charity without the sigh. The sigh is the breath of sympathy.

You cannot heal a man by merely being sorry for him; you must be sorry with him. Sympathy is not sorrow for, but sorrow with. What does Paul mean when he says, “I am crucified together with Christ”? He means that the cross of Christ has become his own cross. Sympathy in its deepest sense is an obliteration of separate personalities; it makes me live in your experience; I do not so much heave a sigh for you as heave your sigh. Until I can do that, I can be no missionary to you; I must appropriate your pain if I would relieve you. But there is something more which is wanted for charity than the sigh. I cannot help you by merely feeling your pain. Pity is a great power, but it is not the greatest power. The greatest power is hope. There must be the upward glance as well as the downward bending. Jesus is sighing over a deaf man; but what makes Him sigh? It is because the man ought not to be deaf. It is because deafness is not the normal state of any man. This sufferer was meant to hear music, to listen to human voices, to express the tones which the heart loves so well. Jesus felt he was worthy of better things; therefore He looked up when He healed him. He would - not have looked up if He had been bending over a stone. A stone is also deaf, but it is normally deaf; it was never made to catch the sounds of music, and therefore its state awakes no sigh,

But the man was in want of something — something which he ought to have. He had been denuded of his birthright. He was knocking at a barred gate of his own being. He was beating at a closed door of the nature which God had given him. Is it wonderful that Christ should

have cried, “Be thou opened!” — is it wonderful He should have looked up with the expectancy of hope!

Lord, I need the sight as well as the sigh. If I am to serve my afflicted brother I must have, not only the night, but the star. It is not enough that I feel my brother to be a clod of the valley, irresponsive to the sights and sounds of spiritual beauty; that will not cause me to help him. The clod of the valley has no claim to be responsive; it is its nature to be dead. I must be made to feel that my brother has a life below the clod, a life which the clod is pressing down, a life which struggles to be free. That, O my Father, must be the ground of my compassion, of my humanity to man. Not by the sense of my brother’s sin shall I say, “Let there be light!” Show me the budding of a flower, yea, the place where a flower should have been! Let me see that this is not his rest, not his goal! Send me the voice of his unuttered speech, the prayer of his unconscious heart! Send me a sight of the wastes which his world cannot fill; send me a sense of the hunger which his swine-husks cannot satisfy! Send me a touch of the thirst which his pleasures cannot appease! Send me a hint of the home-sickness which makes him fast mid sumptuous fare! Send me a message of the memories which mock his present hour! Show me the song that sings in his silence, the robe revealed in his rags, the majesty moving in his mean attire! When Iam able to look up amid the sigh I shall heal the drooping heart.