| Week-Day Religion |
Chapter 10 |
Page 5 |
Into a prisoner’s cell came each day for half an hour a few rays of sunlight. He found a nail and a stone on his floor and with these rude implements cut and chiseled day after day during the few moments when the light lay upon the wall, until in the stone he had cut the image of the Christ upon his cross. In the dark days of sorrow that come to us we may serve Christ by seeking to sculpture his sweet beauty, not in cold stone, but on the warm, living walls of our own hearts.
Thus we see that serving the Lord is not the privilege and pleasure of a few rare hours alone, but embraces the whole wide range of life and work and takes in all our relationships to home, to friends, to humanity, to business, to pleasure. If the heart be right, our whole life becomes one unbroken series of services rendered to the Lord.
That vital point in this whole matter is the motive that underlies it all. It is possible to live a very laborious life filled with intense activities, and yet never, from youth to old age, do one deed that Christ accepts as service. It is possible even to live a life of what is called religious service, full of what are regarded as sacred duties, and yet never in one thing truly serve Christ. The heart may never have been give to him at all. Or the motives may have been wrong. That which makes any act distinctively a Christian act is that it is done in the name of Christ and to please him. The moralist does right things, but without any reference to Christ, not confessing him or loving him; the Christian does the same things, but does them because the Master wants him to do them. As one has beautifully said, “What we can do for God is little or nothing, but we must do our little nothings for his glory.” This is the motive that filling our hearts makes even drudgery divine because it is done for Christ. It may be but to sweep a room or rock an infant to sleep or teach a ragged child or mend a rent or plane a board; but if it is done as unto the Lord, it will be owned and accepted. But it may be the grandest of works – the founding of an asylum, the building of a cathedral or a whole life of eloquence or display; but if it is not done for Christ, it all counts for nothing.
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