Fellow-Workers with God

“Who doeth good by loving deed or word; Who lifteth up a fallen one or dries a tear; Who helps another bear his heavy cross, Or on the parched and fevered lips doth pour A blessed draught of water sweet and cool, Becomes co-worker with the Lord of all.”

THERE are many things which God docs, in which we can have no part. A child wished he could be a painter, that he might help God paint the clouds and skies and sunsets. God wants no help in this work. He wrought unhelped by creature-hand in making the worlds. In providence, too, he has no fellow-worker. No one assists him in keeping the stars in their orbits, in sending rains and dews and summer sunshine. No one helps him paint the roses and the lilies.

But there are other things in which God permits us to be his co-workers. He calls us up close beside him, to work with him, doing a part while he does a part. A story is told of an artist who greatly desired to have a share in the decorating of a famous building. If he could not do it all, he asked that he might be permitted to paint one panel of one of the great doors. If this request could not be granted, he craved to be allowed at least to hold the brushes for the master who should do the work. If it was deemed to be such an honor and privilege to do even the smallest part on a building of only earthly glory, what an honor it is to work with Christ in the building of his great spiritual temple!

Yet this privilege is ours. We may not help God paint his clouds and sunsets, but we can put tints of immortal beauty upon human souls. In a certain sense we are fellow-workers with God in all the affairs of our lives. We often imagine we are doing certain fine things with out God’s help. But we are not. A man makes great inventions, constructs wonderful machines, harnesses steam and electricity, and says, “See what I have done!” But who put into nature the mysterious forces and energies which he has made available for practical use? In their inventions and discoveries, men only find the powers God stored away ages since. Men are only discoverers and adjusters. They run wires on poles, or lay cables in the sea; but the currents that flash through them, carrying messages of business, commerce, joy, sorrow, come from God’s hidden reserves of energy. Men are working with God, and their part is small.

In spiritual life it is also true that we are fellow-workers with God. He calls us to stand beside him and do a part while he does a part. When a mother, with a great joy in her heart, takes her baby into her arms and looks into its face, God says to her, “Take this child, and nurse it for me.” It is God’s child. He wants it trained, its powers developed, so that when at length the man stands before his tasks he may not fail, but may do them well. Yet God gives into the mother’s hands the duty of nursing the child for him, teaching it, putting into its heart gentle thoughts, wooing out the sweet love that sleeps there, and thus preparing the life for its place and work. Yet alone she can not do anything. God and the mother are fellow-workers in the training of the life.

The teacher sits down with his class. The end of the teaching is, the bringing of the scholars to Christ, the building up in them of a Christian character, and the leading of them out into ways of usefulness and loving service. What is the teacher’s part? He can make plain to his class the word and will of God, and he can also represent Christ to them, showing them in his own life glimpses of the divine compassion, tenderness, yearning, truth, purity, and love. But he cannot himself do what needs to be done in their young lives; only God can do that. But God works through the teacher. God and he are fellow-workers.

So it is in all Christian work. We have our part. God has ordained that the heavenly treasure shall be put in earthen vessels. We must never forget, however, that we are not doing the work ourselves. Saddest of all things in Christian workers is the losing out of the heart of the sense of dependence upon God, the leaving out of Christ, the feeling that they are doing the things alone. God will work through us only when we humbly, in faith and love and self-renunciation, lay ourselves into his hands, that his life may flow through us to the lives we are seeking to bless.

We are the chisel with which God carves his statues. Unquestionably we must do the work. Our hands must touch men’s lives and beautify them. The mother, the teacher, the Christian friend, must carve and mould the life of the child into the beauty of the Lord. But the human worker is only the chisel. The sculptor needs his chisel, but the chisel can do nothing, produce no beauty, of itself. We must put our selves into Christ’s hand that he may use us.

There is a hallowing influence in this thought that we are working beside God in what he is doing on immortal lives. Are we worthy to do it? Hawthorne, speaking of a block of marble and the possibilities of beauty that lie in it, waiting to be brought out, said that the stone assumed a sacred character, and that no man should dare touch it unless he felt within him self a consecration and priesthood. If this be true when it is only a block of marble that is to be wrought upon, how much more is it true of a human soul, — a child’s life, for example, laid in a mother’s arms; any life laid in your hands or mine, — that we may free the angel that waits within it! It is a most sacred moment when a life is put before us to be touched by us.

Suppose that the mother, — suppose that you or I, — should not do the holy work well, and the life should be marred, hurt, stunted, its beauty blurred, its purity stained, its development impaired, its power weakened; think of the sadness of the result. How sweet the mother must keep her own spirit, how gentle, how patient, how pure and true, while she is working with God in nursing her child for him! How heavenly must the teacher keep his temper, how quiet, how unselfish, how Christlike, when he is sitting beside the Master, working with him on the lives of the scholars! How softly we should all walk continually, with rev, erent, chastened, uplifted feeling and hallowed spirit, as we remember that we are fellow-workers with God!

There is here also a strong impulse to faithfulness. The work we do for God and with God we must do well. We are tempted to say, “My part is not important; it is so small. It cannot matter much to God whether I do it well or ill. He does not need my little part.” But that is not true. Our least part is important. God needs our faithfulness. He needs the mother in training the child, — needs the most conscientious, most painstaking, most beautiful work she can do. If her hand slacks even only for one day, doing its part carelessly, less than faithfully, there may be a blemish, a marring in the child’s life, which shall reveal itself years hence. The completeness of the finished work depends always on our doing our best. We rob God if we are ever less than faithful.

There is special encouragement in this truth for those who feel unequal to the duty that the

Master assigns to them. They see others who do beautiful things that bless and brighten the world, but it seems to them that all they can do is so commonplace, so homely, so full of blur ring and fault, that it is not worth while for them to do it at all. But the clumsiest hands truly surrendered to God may do work that is most beautiful in his sight.

Long ago, in quaint old Nuremberg, lived two boys, Albrecht Durer and Franz Knigstein. Both wished to be artists, and both studied and wrought with great earnestness. Albrecht had genius; but Franz had only love for art, without the power to put on canvas the beautiful visions that haunted him. Years passed, and they planned to make each an etching of the Lord’s Passion. When they compared their work, that of Franz was cold and lifeless, while Albrecht’s was instinct with beauty and pathos. Then Franz saw it all, and knew that he could never be an artist. His heart was almost broken; but he said in a voice choked with tears, yet full of manly courage, “Franz, the good Lord gave me no such gift as this of yours; but something, some homely duty, he has waiting somewhere for me to do. Yet now — be you artist of Nuremberg, and I” —

“Stay, Franz, be still one moment,” cried Albrecht, seizing his pencil. Franz supposed Albrecht was adding some finishing touches to his exquisite drawing, and waited patiently in his attitude of surrender, his hands folded together. With his swift pencil Albrecht drew a few lines and showed the sketch to his friend.

“Why, those are only my hands,” said Franz. “Why did you take them?” — “I took them,” said Albrecht, “as you stood there making the sad surrender of your life so very bravely. I said to myself, ‘Those hands that may never paint a picture can now most certainly make one.’ I have faith in those folded hands, my brother-friend. They will go to men’s hearts in the days to come.”

Albrecht’s words were true prophecy. Into the world of love and duty has gone the story so touching and helpful in its beautiful simplicity; and into the world of art has gone the picture — for Albrecht Diirer’s famous “Folded Hands” is but a picture of the hands of Franz Knigstein as they were folded that day in sweet, brave resignation, when he gave up his heart’s dearest wish, and yet believed that the Lord had some homely duty still worth his doing.

This charming story tells us that if we cannot do the beautiful things we see others doing for Christ and which we long to do, we can at least do some lowly work for him. It teaches us, too, that self-surrender to God, though our heart’s fondest hope is laid down, is, in God’s sight, really the most beautiful thing we can do with our life. It teaches us also, that the hands which can do no brilliant thing for God, may yet become hands of benediction in the world. If we are truly fellow-workers with God, he can use whatever we have that we really surrender to him. And ofttimes he can do more with our failures than with our successes.

Then not only are we fellow-workers with God, but also with each other. Sometimes we are tempted to be envious of others who are working by our side. They seem to overshadow us. It hurts us to hear them praised. It appears to us as if they wronged us in some way, by drawing off some measure of attention from us, by obscuring our little work in the brilliance of their larger or more conspicuous achievement. It should cure us of all such miserable feelings to remember that in God’s perfect plan each has his own particular part to do in the great whole. The work of our brother next to us is his, not ours. We could not do it, even if he were not in his place. The fact that he does his part well, and recp approval and commendation, will not detract from our commendation if we are faithful in our own place.

The work of no one is more than a fragment at the best. Nobody finishes anything in this world. The strongest, the most skilful, the longest-lived, only puts a few touches on some thing of God’s. Perhaps he begins a piece of new work, and then leaves it for others to continue; or perhaps he enters into the labor of others who have come before him, carrying it on a little farther. One sows, another reaps — we are co-workers. Our work well done will be all the more perfect if those who work with us do their part well; and no matter how others are praised, God’s approval of us will depend upon our own faithfulness.

“What matter, friend, though you and I

May sow, and others gather?
We build and others occupy,

Each laboring for the other.
What though we toil from sun to sun,

And men forget to flatter? The noblest work our hands have done —

If God approve, what matter?”