| Secrets of a Beautiful Life |
Chapter 2 |
Page 3 |
It is well that we should get a very clear idea of our true relation as Christians to all other people. We owe love to every one, and love always serves. Serving is an essential quality of love. Love does not stand among people commanding attention and demanding to be ministered unto, exacting rights, honour, and respect. Love seeks to give, to minister, to be of use, to do good to others. There are many people who want to have friends, meaning by friends pleasant persons who will come into their life to do things for them, who will minister to their comfort, who will advance their interests, who will flatter their vanity, who will make living easier for them. But that is not the way Christ would define friendship. He would put it just the other way. The true Christian desire is to be a friend to others, to do things for them, to minister to their comfort, to further their interests, to be a help and a blessing to them. That was St. Paul’s thought when he said that he was a debtor to every man. He wanted to be every one’s ministering friend. When a man stood before him, Paul’s heart yearned to do him good in some way, went out to him in loving thought, longed to impart to him some spiritual gift, to add to his comfort, happiness, or usefulness. It is thus we should relate ourselves to every human being who comes within our influence. To every person we meet we have an errand. One has put it well in the following lines:
“May ever soul that touches mine—
Be it the slightest contact—get there from some good,
Some little grace, one kindly thought,
One inspiration yet unfelt, one bit of courage
For the darkening sky, one gleam of faith
To brave the thickening ills of life,
One glimpse of brighter skies beyond the gathering mists,
To make this life worth while,
And heaven a surer heritage.”
This does not mean that we should be officious and obtrusive in pressing our help upon those we meet. There is a story of one whose prayer was that he might be permitted to do a great deal of good without even knowing it. That is the best helpfulness which flows out of the heart and life as light from a star, as fragrance from a flower. Love works most effectively when it works unconsciously, almost instinctively, inspired from within. Then it bestows its blessing or does its good unobtrusively. You do not know you are being helped.
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