| Strength and Beauty |
Chapter 24 |
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This is the great lesson of Christian life. It is not one which applies only to death and the hope of immortality: it applies to all life’s experiences. It does not come in merely once a year, with its brightness and its joy; it is a lesson for every day, and it has its inspiration for us in every phase of living. We are continually coming up to graves in which we must lay away some hope, some treasure, some joy, but from which the thing laid away rises again in newness of life and beauty.
Every call for self denial is such a grave. We come to a point where the law of love demands that we give up a pleasure on which we had set our heart. If we are not ready for the sacrifice, if we cannot make it, the grain of wheat abides alone, with no increase, no fruit. But if we, in quiet love and faith, do the hard duty, accept the self denial; render the costly service, the golden grain falls out of our hand into the earth, and dies. Yet it does not perish. It lives again, springing up from its burial in new and richer life. We lost our coveted ease, or our cherished possession, we gave up our pleasure and spent our strength in helping another, we forewent our evening’s rest and hastened out into the storm to do good, but we have a spiritual blessing whose value to us far surpasses the little ease, comfort, enjoyment, or rest which we gave up and buried away in our garden sepulchre.
Every call to a hard or costly duty is a seed. It lies in our hand – what shall we do with it? Shall we keep our little ease, our piece of money, our pleasure, our quiet hour? Or shall we let it fall into the ground? Some one puts it thus: “I was given a seed to keep as mine. When I most loved it, I was bidden to bury it in the ground. I buried it, not knowing that I was sowing.” We know what comes from sowing – the seed springs up into a plant, beautiful, fragrant; or into grain that waves in a golden harvest; or into a tree on which grow luscious fruits.
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