| Week-Day Religion |
Chapter 30 |
Page 4 |
As we read still more deeply into the heart of this matter, we find that God bestows no gift, power or blessing upon us for ourselves alone. Take money. The mistake of the rich man in our Lord’s parable was not that he was rich. He made his wealth honestly. God gave it to him in abundant harvest. But his sin began when he asked, “What shall I do with all this wealth? Where shall I bestow all my fast increasing goods?” His decision showed that he was living only for himself. He thought not of his relation to God above or to men about him. “I will build larger barns, and there bestow my goods.” Instead of using his wealth to bless others, he would hoard it and keep it all in his own hands. The man who fulfills his mission and illustrates his consecration when money is given to him is he who says, “This is not mine. I have received it through God’s blessing. He has greatly honored me in making me his agent to use it for him. It is a sacred truest, granted to be employed in his name for the blessing of men; I must do with it just what Christ himself would do if he were here in my place.”
Or take knowledge. Culture, in a consecrated life, is not to be sought for its own sake, but that we may thereby be made capable of doing more for the good or the joy of others. Each new lesson in life, each new accession to our knowledge, each new experience, is legitimately employed only when it is turned at once into some channel of personal helpfulness. One has the gift of music, and can sing or play well. The kind of consecration Christ wants of this gift is its use to do good to others, to make them happier or better, to put songs into silent hearts and joys into sad hearts. Of all gifts, there is no one, perhaps, capable of a diviner ministry that is the gift of song.
“God sent his singers upon the earth,
With songs of sadness and of mirth,
That they might touch the hearts of men,
And bring them back to heaven again.”
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