The Lesson of Service
We can best minister to Him by helping them Who dared not touch his hallowed garment’s hem. Their lives are even as ours — one piece, one plan. Him we know not, him shall we never know Till we behold him in the least of these Who suffer or who sin. In sick souls he Lies bound and sighing; asks our sympathies; Their grateful eyes thy benison bestow, Brother and Lord, — “Ye did it unto me.”
Lucy Larcom.
Jesus taught that we should live, “not to be ministered unto, but to minister.” This is a lesson that it is very hard to learn. It is easy enough to utter sentimental platitudes about the nobleness of service, but no one can truly live after this heavenly pattern until his being is saturated with the divine Spirit.
Just what is the lesson that our Lord sets
us we should try definitely to understand. It
is, in a word, so to relate ourselves to others
that our chief thought concerning them shall be, not how we may get pleasure, profit, honor, or advancement from them for ourselves, but how we may give them pleasure, do them good, or put honor upon them. If we have this spirit, we shall see in every person who comes within the circle of our life one to whom we owe love and service.
God has so ordered that we cannot love and serve him, and not also love and serve our fellow-men. Jesus made this very plain in his picture of the last judgment, when he said that he is hungry in every hungry little one of his; that he is sick in every least one of his who is sick; that in the stranger who comes to our door he stands before us, waiting for the hospitality of love. In serving his, we are serving him; in neglecting his, we neglect him. We cannot fulfil our duty by loving Christ and serving him, while we ignore our fellow-men. He accepts no such service. If we say we love him, he points to the needy, the hungry, the sick, the burdened ones, the suffering all about us, and says: “Show your love to these. I do not need service now, but these need it. Serve them in my name. Look at each one of them as if I were myself the one in pain or need, and do for these, my brethren, just what you would do for me if I were actually in their condition.” We cannot get away from this relationship to Christ. It binds us to every other life. To act selfishly toward any one is to act selfishly toward Christ. To neglect any one who needs our help is to neglect Christ himself. To do good to any other in Christ’s name is to serve Christ.
If only we understood that Christ himself is with us still and always, not only in his spiritual presence, but in the person of every needy or suffering one who belongs to him, it would transform all life for us, putting glory into the commonest lives, and the splendor of angel service into the lowliest ministry. How sacred it would make all life if we saw Christ in every one who comes to us in any need! We wish sometimes that we had lived when Jesus was here, and we say we would have served him most sweetly and lovingly. Would we? Mrs. Margaret E. Preston has taught us a needed lesson in one of her poems: —
“If I had dwelt” — so mused a tender woman,
All fine emotions stirred Through pondering o’er that Life, divine yet human,
Told in the sacred word — If I had dwelt of old, a Jewish maiden,
In some Judean street, Where Jesus walked, and heard his word so laden
With comfort strangely sweet; And seen the face, where utmost pity blended
With each rebuke of wrong, — I would have left my lattice and descended,
And followed with the throng,
“Foxes have holes” — methinks my heart had broken
To hear the words so said. While Christ had not — were sadder words eer spoken ?-
A place to lay his head! I would have flung abroad my doors before him,
And in my joy have been First on the threshold, eager to adore him,
And crave his entrance in!”
Ah! would you so? Without a recognition
You passed him yesterday; Jostled aside, unhelped, his mute petition,
And calmly went your way. With warmth and comfort, garmented and girdled.
Before your window-sill
THE LESSON OF SERVICE. ‘Jl
Sad crowds swept by — and if your blood is curdled,
You wear your jewels still. You catch aside your robes lest want should clutch them
In its imploring wild; Or lest some penitent might touch them,
And you be thus defiled. Oh! dreamer, dreaming that your faith is keeping
All service free from blot, Christ daily walks your streets, sick, suffering, weeping,
And you perceive him not!”
This teaching invests every life with a sacredness to disregard which is a sacrilege. We must look upon every one as if he were the Christ. We dare not pass by any one carelessly. We know not to whom we may have a duty of love. The stranger whom mere seeming chance brings into our presence for an hour may have been sent to us that in some way we may serve him. We are always safe in assuming that we have an errand to every one we meet. We need not announce our mission, and we must never display officiousness in the discharge of our duty of love. We need only to hold ourselves in readiness, with all of love’s humility, alacrity, and gentleness, to do whatever heart or hand may find to do in serving him. Our duty to him may be nothing more than the showing of a kindly spirit in our manner, the giving of a hearty salutation, or the inspiration of a cheerful countenance. But however small the service may be which it is ours to render, it is a divine ministry, and its value to the person we never may know.
Nothing is small that helps a human life. The Koran tells of the sending of Gabriel to the earth to keep Solomon from some sin, and at the same time to help a little toiling ant to get home with its burden. The latter service was as angelic as the former. No ministry on which God sends us can be considered small.
No mere theoretical acknowledgment of this universal obligation of man to man will avail. Fine sentiment is not enough; we must get the sentiment into practical life. We must bring our visions down out of ethereal mists into something substantial and real. We must let the love of our heart flow out in life and act and helpful ministry. Stern old Cromwell showed good common-sense when, seeing some silver statues in dusty niches, and learning that they were the twelve apostles, he gave orders that they be taken down, converted into money, and sent out to do good. That is what we should do with our fine professions of brotherly love. Brotherly love has no right to pose forever in mere creed and sentiment; there is something far better for it to do. In this world in which there are so much need, sorrow, and heart-hunger, it has a holy mission everywhere. If we would be Christlike, we must, like our Master, go about doing good.
A little child is said once to have closed her prayer on a winter evening in this way: “I saw a little girl on the street this afternoon; and she was cold and barefooted; but it isn’t any of our business, is it, God ‘^.” She was only more honest in her prayer than some older persons; for many people certainly act as if they regarded it as none of their business, when they see their fellow-men suffering and in need. But the teaching of Christ shows that ‘j6 THINGS TO LIVE FOR.
it is our business, that we are under obligation to love and serve all men. We are debtor to every man; we may not owe him money, but we owe him love, and love means whatsoever help he needs, — bread for his hunger, or sympathy and cheer in his trial and struggle.
If we but look at people always in this way, we shall find ourselves asking concerning every one we meet: “■ How can I be a help to this person? What does God want me to do for him?” We certainly have some errand of love to every one who crosses our path. To busy men the interruptions of frequent callers are trying, especially when the callers have no particular errand. There is apt to be a strong temptation to treat the visitors impatiently, almost rudely. We are in the midst of important duties, and the time is all too brief in which to finish what we must do before nightfall. Certainly we have no right to waste our time with any such interrupters, devastators of time, as some one calls them.
Yet doubtless we have an errand to each and every such caller. We owe him at least a kindly greeting, a pleasant word. To treat him rudely, and turn him away as if he were a dog, is to insult Christ himself. Perhaps we cannot do for him what he wants us to do, but we can at least treat him kindly. People with sad, discouraged hearts need love more than they need money. We do not read that Jesus ever gave money to any poor person whom he saw; but he did give to every one something far better than money. No one ever came to him with any real need and went away unblessed. We may always treat in the same wav those who come to us. Without losing: many seconds of time, we may send our visitor from us with a lighter heart, and with a little new hope in his breast to strengthen him for the struggle of his life that goes on forever. All about us are those who are forever in need of love’s ministry. For many people life is very hard. Some traveller speaks of the great stretches of the lava-fields for miles around a volcano, and of the desolateness and dreariness of the paths over those fields. There was not a blade of grass, nor a shrub, yS THINGS TO LIVE FOR.
nor the tiniest living thing anywhere to be seen. But here and there as he went on, he saw, in the cracks and crevices of the lavabeds, little flowers growing; and flowers never before seemed so lovely, even in finest garden or conservatory, as there amid the bleakness. Like those walks across the lava-fields are the paths of many in this world, with their hard toil, bitter sorrow, and heavy burden-bearing; and like the lovely little flowers that so cheered the traveller in those desolate regions are the human kindnesses which here and there come, with their sweet fragrance and cheer, into these dreary lives.
We have it in our power to put untold gladness and help into the lives that every day touch ours. We can do it by learning this divine lesson of service, and by regarding every person we meet as one to whom we are sent on an errand of love. This attitude toward others will put an end to all supercilious pride and hauo-htiness. We shall no more set ourselves up on little pedestals of self-conceit, demanding homage from others; rather, like our
Master, we shall stand with basin and towel, ready to wash the feet of the lowliest. We shall no more think ourselves too good to perform the humblest ministries to the humblest, but shall consider it the highest honor to do the things that are least; for Jesus has said he is chiefest who serves the most.
*’ Lord, make us all love all, that when we meet Even myriads of earth’s myriads at thy bar, We may be glad as all true lovers are
Who, having parted, count reunion sweet,
Safe gathered home around thy blessed feet;
Come home by different roads from near or far, Whether by whirlwind or by flaming car,
From pangs or sleep, safe folded round thy seat.
O, if our brother’s blood cry out to us.
How shall we meet thee who hast loved us all. Thee whom we never loved, not loving him? The unloving cannot chant with seraphim.
Bear harp of gold or palm victorious. Or face the vision beatifical.”