| The Best Things in Life |
Chapter 17 |
Page 6 |
Older girls, too, have fine opportunities for helping younger brothers and sisters. They should be sure to show their love in all self forgetful ways. A gentleman tells of seeing a half grown girl carrying a large over grown baby almost as big as herself. She seemed to be entirely unequal to her task, and yet she was as happy as a lark. “Well, little girl, is not your load too heavy for you?” he asked. “Oh, no, sir,” she cheerfully replied, “it is my brother.” That made the burden light. Love made the task easy. God bless the little girl mothers. They can be sweet influences in the home. They can do a thousand little things for their younger sisters and brothers. They can be patient and gentle with them. They can teach them many lessons. They can show them how to be sweet and brave. They can carry little burdens for them, and help them along the hard bits of path. Let the older girls be guardian angels for the younger ones in the home.
One beautiful thing about loving is that it brings its own reward. We say it costs to love, and so it does. We must forget self. We must give up our own pleasure, our own way, and think only of other. But it is in this very cost of loving that the blessing comes to us. We do not exhaust our store of loving in giving and sacrificing. The more we give the more we have. Instead of leaving us poor it makes us rich. It is like the widow’s meal and oil. If she had refused to share her little with the prophet’s need, she would have had only enough to last her own household one day. But she gave to the prophet, and the little supply lasted for herself, her son, and the man of God, through years.
How can we learn the lesson? It takes patience and long practice to lean any lesson. The lesson of love is very long, and takes a great deal of patience and very much practice. It begins in the heart. Let Christ live in you, and he will sweeten your life. One day at an auction a man bought a vase of cheap earthenware for a few cents. He put into the vase a rich perfume, the attar of roses. For a long time the vase held this perfume, and when it was empty it had been so soaked through with the sweet perfume that the fragrance lingered. One day the vase fell and was broken to pieces, but every fragment still smelled of the attar of roses.
We are all common clay, plain earthenware, but if the love of Christ is kept in our hearts it will sweeten all our life and we shall become loving as he is. That is the way the beloved disciple learned the lesson and grew into such lovingness. He leaned on Christ’s breast, and Christ’s gentleness filled all his life.
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