Part 17 (1/2)
But men who are awake, and doing something, find a vent for their energy on some lower level. The G.o.d-given energy will move out and stir itself to action. But, having somehow missed the real purpose planned for them, they allow the lower purposes to grip them. They organize great affairs, or less great, industrial, intellectual, political, fraternal, social, and spend their energy on these. It is the response they make to the call of their natures for some great gripping purpose. But it looks very much like another case of meeting a request for bread with cold hard stones.
These things in themselves are right, of course; so far as they are right. They belong in the scheme of life. They should be given full place in one's life. But that place is always a distinctly secondary place. They belong in as number two.
A Christian business man gives most of the day and year to his business, and gives of the best of his thought and strength to it. But if he have gotten his bearings straight, his business is not in first place. It is made to serve something higher. It earns the gold with which to finance the great purpose of Jesus' life, and of his own life, namely, the purpose of winning men, and of winning a whole world of them. How it would sweeten business and fraternal and social contacts and friends.h.i.+ps, if the salt of this great purpose seasoned them!
Living Broad Lives in Narrow Alleys.
We need the bigness of this great purpose. So many lives are dwarfed by their very littlenesses. We are bothered with being short-sighted. The eyegla.s.ses of the Master's purpose for us would wondrously widen out our scope of vision. And through the new eyes would come broader, farther, clearer views, and changed action. The littleness of our ideas would be amusing if it were not so distressing.
I recall one day riding on a Fort-Wayne train through Indiana. I chanced to overhear a bit of conversation. Two men, chance acquaintances, were talking. One of them had his home in Elkhart. The other asked him where Elkhart is. By the side of the Elkhart man there sat a little sweet-faced boy. Instantly, as the question was asked, he looked up with surprised eyes, and said, ”Don't you know where Elkhart is? Why, Elkhart is down where I live.”
The amusing childish words seemed to have a familiar sound. I seem to have run across a few people whose idea of G.o.d's world is about on the level of the small boy's. The world is where they live. The rest is a hazy, vague something, or--nothing. It exists for them, if it exists at all in their thoughts.
”Living for self, for self alone, for self and none beside; Just as if Jesus had never lived, as if Jesus had never died.”
It would be pitiable and pathetic enough if only these people themselves were concerned in their poor, stunted, narrow-alley living. But it is more than that; it is tragic, because of the mult.i.tude of brothers, here and abroad, sorely needing the help that was meant to go out to them through us.
Then most men live narrow lives so far as the daily round is concerned.
The home, or shop, or store, or office is their daily horizon, with practically the same round of duties day after day, year in and year out.
The very narrowness of the round tends to make narrow people. They get into as much of a rut in their thinking as their daily action is apt to become. Their work runs in fixed grooves that are apt to become fixed ruts. And this makes ruts in their thinking. Their souls seem to grow small by the very smallness and sameness of the daily tread. That is the life of the great crowd of men all over the world.
It's an immense relief to see something big Big things always attract. Is it partly because our daily round is so narrow and small? Jesus plans a bigness that shall refresh us constantly. We have hearts big enough to hold a world, and brains able to plan for a planet, even while our feet tread the same old shut-in path.
A young man may be going a commonplace, treadmill sort of grind, in a small corner of some great manufacturing concern, and be at the same time carrying on a bigger enterprise than the president of his concern. For he may be planning and praying for a world, and actually lifting it up in the arms of his strong purpose toward the level of G.o.d.
The s.h.i.+pping clerk may be hammering in barrel-heads all day long, but each blow may help emphasize the prayer of his heart for China, or India, or his Sunday-school cla.s.s.
”Forenoon, afternoon, and night, Forenoon, afternoon, and night, Forenoon, afternoon, and what? no more?
The empty song repeats itself. Yea, that is life.
Make this forenoon sublime, this afternoon a psalm, This night a prayer, and time is conquered, and thy crown is won.”
The Master's gracious plan is that we shall have the refreshment of doing big things. We are made for big things. They help us grow into the big size that belongs to us. World-winning is a great boon to the crowd compelled by the habit of life to tread a narrow path.
Giving G.o.d Free Use of Ourselves.
Now the great question every earnest man asks himself is, How can I be of most use to G.o.d and my fellows? I want to suggest three things that have helped me in answering that question. It may be that they will help you, too, in getting your answer to it.
First of all is this: that we let G.o.d have the free use of us. Whatever I am, whatever gifts and opportunities I have--these I will turn over to G.o.d, that He may have the fullest and freest use of them. G.o.d asks from each of us a consecrated personality. And ”consecrated” simply means that I give G.o.d the use of myself, and that He makes use of what I have given to Him. That's the double meaning of the word in the Bible.
My personality, that is, what I am in myself, is the chief thing I have in life. It is through this personality, which men recognize as I, that the Spirit of G.o.d works in His reaching out for others. My personality is the make-up of all that I am. My presence is that subtle something that combines all that I am. It clings to me wherever I go. Men know it by my name. Out through it goes the power of the man within.
The body, the glance of the eye, the quality and intonation of the voice, the way the body is carried, and the something more than these that unites them into one--these go to make up the presence, the outer sh.e.l.l of the personality. All the power within makes itself felt through this. A man's mere presence is an immeasurable influence.