Service by the Sorrowful

“Let us run with patience.” — Hebrews xii. i.

TO rtm with patience is a very difficult thing. Running is apt to suggest the absence of patience, the eagerness to reach the goal. We commonly associate patience with lying clown. We think of it as the angel that guards the couch of the invalid. And, indeed, for those who are invalids patience is the angel-virtue, the crown of spiritual ripeness. Yet, I do not think the invalid’s patience the hardest to achieve. There is a patience which I believe to be harder — the patience that can run. To lie down in the time of grief, to be quiet under the stroke of adverse fortune, implies a great strength. But I know of something that implies a strength greater still; it is the power to work under the stroke. To have a great weight at your heart and still to run. to have a big grief in your soul and still to work, to have a deep anguish in your spirit and still to perform the daily task — it is a Christ-like thing! Many of us could nurse our grief without crying if we were allowed to nurse it. The hard thing is that most of us are called to exercise our patience, not in bed, but in the street. We are called to bury our sorrow, not in lethargic quiescence, but in active service — in the exchange, in the counting-house, in the workshop, in the hour of social intercourse, in the contribution to another’s joy. There is no burial of sorrow so difficult as that; it is the “running with patience.”

This was Thy patience, O Son of Man! It was at once a waiting and a running — a waiting for the goal, and a doing of the lesser work meantime. How seldom, when, in that Gospel story, I see Thee bearing my little crosses, do I think that, all the time, a big cross was at Thine own heart! I see Thee at Cana turning the water into wine lest a marriage feast should be clouded. I see Thee in the desert feeding a multitude with bread just to relieve a temporary pain. And, all the time, Thou wert bearing a mighty grief, unshared, unspoken. Thou wert carrying my cross up Thy Dolorous Way, and easing my heart when Thine own heart was breaking. Make me partaker of Thy marvellous patience! Give me the power, Thy power, to run the race when the heart is heavy! I often ask to get light at evening time. But I should like to give light at evening time, O Lord. I should like at my evening time to have so much of Thy Divine patience that I could run the common race of life and make no sign. I should like to have a smile for the weary though my own soul be sad, to have a cheer for the downcast though my own spirit be drooping. Men ask for a rainbow in the cloud; but I would ask more from Thee. I would be, in my cloud, myself a rainbow — a minister to others’ joy. My patience will be perfect when it can work in the vineyard.