| The Best Things in Life |
Chapter 11 |
Page 5 |
Of course it is worth while to build churches, found hospitals, and help the poor, but it is worth while also to cultivate friendship with Christ. The Chinese have a saying, “If you have two loaves of bread, sell one and buy a lily.” Some people toil only for loaves, never thinking of lilies. But bread is not all that people need. There are days when you are not hungry for food, but are longing for sympathy, for a word of kindness, for encouragement, for appreciation, for friendship. There are hours when you have everything you could crave of earthly comfort and blessing and of human affection and interest, but need the touch of the hand of Christ, some revealing of divine interest and affection. Sell a loaf and buy a lily, for the lily will mean more to you than the bread. Of all the blessing within your reach, nothing will mean so much to you as the friendship of Christ. If you have it you will not miss anything else that you do not have. This friendship, close, constant, confidential, satisfying, will leave nothing else to be desired.
Think, too, what the friendship of Christ will do for us in the way of spiritual culture. It was the friendship of Jesus that was the chief influence in the making of St. John. He was not always the apostle of love that we know in the fourth gospel and the epistles. These were written when John was an old man. At first he was hasty in temper and speech, resentful, ambitious for place, not sweet and loving. But he accepted the friendship of Christ, allowing its holy blessedness to pour into his heart like sunshine. And it transformed him.
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