| In His Steps |
Chapter 6 |
Page 4 |
Sincere sympathy is oftentimes better than money. People in distress generally need a friend more than they need gift or miracle. God sends to earth no angles whose ministry leaves more benedictions of joy, of help, of inspiration, of uplifting, of restoring, than are left by the ministry of the angel of true human sympathy.
For this service we need only to have in us the true spirit of Christ, a spirit of unselfish love, and then blessing will flow from our life even without effort or purpose, unconsciously, as fragrance pours from a flower, as light streams from a lamp.
“As some rare perfume in a vase of clay
Pervades it with a fragrance not its own,
So, when thou dwellest in a mortal soul,
All heaven’s own sweetness seems around it thrown.”
Christ did other kinds of work, but it was the same spirit that wrought in all his ministry. He taught the people; he scattered the words of truth; he lifted up his voice against wrong and sin; he sought the lost and led them back to the Father; he went to the cross in the room of sinners. In all forms of personal ministry we are to strive to follow in his stops. The golden seeds of heavenly truth which his lips dropped we are to seek to scatter everywhere in life’s desert fields.
The very best thing we can do for people in this world of sin and sorrow is to get the words of Christ into their hearts. It is like scattering flower seeds on the black lava beds about the fiery mountain’s base – in the crevices the seeds will root and grow, and sweet flowers will bloom by and by. Christ’s words are living seeds from which spring up heavenly plants to beautify and bless bleak and dreary lives over which sin’s fires have rolled. The tiniest hand and the weakest can scatter these good seeds in some bare spot where they will grow.
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