| The Best Things in Life |
Chapter 6 |
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“They also serve who only stand and wait.” If standing and waiting are all that we can do, we please our Master just as well and serve him just as acceptably as we used to do when we were most active, that is, if we do not spoil all by chafing and fretting. Our work is not all doing things; we need also to have things done in us. There are lessons to learn which perhaps we never could learn if in the midst of unhindered activities. Certain song birds, when they are to be taught a new song, are shut away in a darkened room for a time, and the song is sung or played over and over within their hearing until they learn it. May it not be thus with us ofttimes? Our Master wants us to learn a new song – the song of contentment, of peace, of uncomplaining joy, and we are called aside from our rushing activity, that in the quiet we may get the song into our heart.
We think the world cannot spare us, that things will not go on at all if we cannot go back to our place and our activity. We think that even Christ’s work will suffer if we have to withdraw from it. Have you ever taken notice of the way the world does when a busy man is suddenly called from his desk, stricken down, his place left empty? Does anything stop? Does his withdrawal leave a great unfilled gap? The first day or two there may be a little confusion, but in a short while the great system of work that he had organized and was conducting, and which he and his friends thought could not be kept in operation without the guidance and skill of his master hand, was going on just as before. Have you noticed that when some wise and active Christian, with hands full of great tasks which it was thought no other one could do, was called away by death, there was but little disturbance or interruption in the progress of the work? By the time the friends returned from the funeral, all was going on in other hands as if nothing had happened. We think we are far more important to the world, even to our Master’s kingdom, than we are.
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