| The Best Things in Life |
Chapter 6 |
Page 7 |
So we need not vex ourselves about our duties when we cannot do them longer – they are not our duties at all any more. Yesterday they were, and there would have been a blank if we had not attended to them. But they are not ours today, when our hand has no longer the strength for them. We should learn the lesson of contentment and trust when called out of action. Yesterday it was our duty to attend to our work; today it is our duty to lie still and be quiet, and to keep sweet. Instead of active service, our part now is to endure patiently, to cultivate humility, gentleness, and patience.
When the Jews celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles the make their booths of branches so light and thin that they can see the stars through them. Through all interruptions and disappointments, through all suffering or pain, all breaking up of plans, we should be sure that the stars be not hindered in their shining upon us, into our lives. Nothing must shut heaven out of our view. When we are called aside from active duty by illness, by invalidism or by old age, we should obey the Master’s new call to come apart and rest a while, and be quiet and still, just as cheerfully as ever we responded to a call to glad work and service. When our working time is over, the form of duty changes for us – that is all. Before, it was diligence and faithfulness in strenuous work; now it is patience and joy in keeping still. The one is just as much obedience as the other, and pleases God just as well.
Then we must not think that we are useless when we cannot work as we used to do. No doubt Persis was doing just as much for the honour of Christ, for the up building of his kingdom and for the sweetening and enriching of the world in those quiet days when she was able to labour no more, as she did in the days now gone, when she laboured much. There was a work going on in her in the quiet days – she was mellowing and ripening in spirit. Then she touched the friends about her by her peace, her contentment. If she was a sufferer, she suffered in patience, sweetly, submissively, songfully. Then she could still work in prayer, and no work we ever do for others is as effective as what we may do on our knees.
Page 7