The Joy of Service

Take joy home,

And make a place in thy heart for her;

And give her time to grow, and cherish her;

Then will she come and sing to thee

When thou art working in the furrow; ay,

It is a comely fashion to be glad;

Joy is the grace we say to God.

Jean Ingelow.

There are many sources of joy. All men are in quest of happiness, and upon a thousand paths the shoeprints of the seekers are found. There is nothing available in all the world, nothing which holds the slightest promise or hope of happiness, that has not been tried by some one eager to find the magic secret.

We are accustomed to say that the only true, deep, unfailing joy is that which we may find in God. The Bible has many promises of happiness, but they all point to spiritual and eternal sources. We read of the joy of the Lord, of rejoicing in God; Christ promises his own joy to his followers. Joy, therefore, is the inheritance of the Christian, — he has a right to claim it. Yet not all Christians are happy. Many whose faith in Christ is unmistakable have joy only in the quiet lulls of life. They are easily disturbed. The song of to-day is choked with tears to-morrow. It is worth our while to try to find the secret of true and abiding Christian joy. We often hear it said that trust in God yields joy, or that a blameless life produces happiness. There is one kind of living, however, which more than any other contains the master secret of joy. It is a life of service. It begins in consecration to Christ: we must, first of all, be his servants. It includes trust, — reposing upon God. But there can be no continued quiet confidence if there be no activity in Christian life. Still water stagnates.

Even trust without action soon loses its restfulness.

Work itself is always a helper of happiness. Indolence is never truly happy. The happiest man is the busy man. Even physical health depends largely upon regular occupation. No man, able for duty, who is not busy, can be truly or deeply happy. The idle man may be living a life of pleasure, but it is not a life of real happiness. Work is a condition of joy. It is a blessing that most people, when sorrow comes, dare not pause to indulge their grief. Their duties are waiting for them, waiting so clamorously that they cannot linger even for the tender sentiment of sorrow. There is scarcely time to wait for the funeral to be over, after a bereavement, before imperative tasks must receive attention. It is well that it is so. The necessary activity keeps the heart from breaking, and preserves the life from the morbidity which so often sorrow produces when the hands lie folded.

Work is therefore a secret of happiness. It saves the heart from being overcharged.

The emotions which otherwise would lie pent up, to the hurt of the life, find vent and are wrought out in activities which bless others, while they produce health and wholesomeness in him who performs them. No worse mistake can be made by one in grief than to drop life’s duties and tasks out of the hands, and cut one’s self off from the common duties and ministries of life. God’s comfort is not found in this way. Joy comes not back to him who nourishes his sorrow in idle brooding; it is found only in the earnest and faithful doing of every duty. Work has saved many a life from despair in time of great grief.

But there is something higher and diviner yet than even work alone. Work may be selfish. It may be solely for the advancement of one’s own interests, without any thought of another’s benefit or comfort. Even then there is blessing in it; for it fills the hands and occupies the thoughts — there is good in occupation itself. But if we add to work the element of serving, with love and thought of others, we have one of the noblest of all the secrets of joy.

Serving comes from loving; it is love’s expression. Serving that is not inspired by love yields no joy. Love that does not serve is not love at all. The measure of self-denial that one is ready to suffer is the measure of the love that is in one’s heart. Love that will not sacrifice is only a sentiment, a fair blossom from which no fruit comes. Love is ready always for serving.

Wherever we see life in its best forms and developments, it has in it the element of service. In every glimpse of heavenly life shown to us in the Bible, we find service as the highest expression of the life’s spirit. The angels who appear, coming and going between heaven and earth, are always engaged in service for some of God’s children. Their mission is described in one sentence: “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?” They come to earth expressly to serve. We know that the angels possess the secret of joy; they are represented as praising God continually. It is the joy of service that fills their hearts. Never a thought of self poisons their pure gladness.

The greatest and highest of all beings is God himself. His is the life which had no beginning, and shall have no ending. All other life — all angel life, all human life — flows from the one great fountain. Yet God lives not for himself. God is love, and the very essence of love is always service. He is ever giving out blessing and good to men. Every revealing of God shows him to us as a God who serves his creatures. He thinks ever of their good. He works continually in providence, in most thoughtful, gentle serving. The highest reach of the divine serving was in the incarnation, when God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.

Then, in the story of the life of Christ, where we have the revealing of the divine character in all its beauty, we find the most wonderful serving. Never did any other man live for his friends as Jesus lived for his. He kept nothing back from them. On the last night of his life, as if to express his love in a way that never could be forgotten, we see him clad as a servant, washing his disciples’ feet. No picture of Jesus in all the Gospels is truer to the very heart of his life than this. He came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. He took on him the form of a servant, to show the divine spirit. A little later he actually gave his life in his matchless service of love. Thus this divinest of all ideals of life is seen serving even unto the uttermost..

We know that in this serving, Jesus found deep and holy joy. It used to be taught that he was a sad man. There was a tradition that he never smiled. But this conception of Jesus could not have been true. He was indeed a man of sorrows, but there was in his heart a deep joy which even his sorrows could not quench. He spoke distinctly and repeatedly of his joy and of his peace. One of the New Testament writers tells us that it was for the joy set before him that he endured the cross, despising the shame.

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