"I delight to do Your will, O my God." Psalm 40:8 The perfect example of this delight was given by the "Son of David," who, "when He came into the world, said, Lo, I come to do Your will, O God." The emotion of the heart, gives readiness to the hand and swiftness to the foot. We do for one another much that would be grievous without the love that makes it luxury. So, true love to God makes His will our delight. "We freely serve, because we freely love." We sometimes wish to do some great thing for God. How eagerly we would set about it! There are few such things within the reach of any one; but small things done cheerfully are great in God's esteem. He who is willing to obey in the least, is a better servant than the man of superior ability who waits for the greatest opportunity to display it. The same sap is in the twig as in the trunk. The value of work is not in the much but in the why. We have what we are; what we are results from what we do; and habitually doing the will of God makes us "partakers of the Divine nature." Great is the comfort of service. It is the active breeze which drives away the brooding mist. If no special voice from heaven summons us, let us search out for ourselves some way of usefulness which we know will be pleasing to God. The woman cured of fever at once rose up and ministered to her Healer and His disciples. Varied services for Him wait at our door. "Do the duty which lies nearest you; your second duty will already have become clearer. Your condition is but the stuff you are to shape the ideal out of—what matters whether such stuff be of this sort or that, only be sure the form you give it be heroic, be poetic." (Carlyle) Be Christian, be godly. "Oh, what hidden powers are lying "Kindnesses if never o'ertaken "Every talent has been given Great troubles are more easily recognized as His will than trifling ones. Torrents, precipices, storms, belonging to the mountain we climb, are cheerfully accepted; but not the blistered foot, the sprained ankle, the broken staff. We joyfully address ourselves to what we think our proper task, but fret at interrupting circumstances. Let us regard these as also the will of God, and therefore our true work, and so delight in them. Taking a trouble, large or little, from His hands, transmutes stone to gold! We surrender easily what we value, in proportion as we surrender it to Him; and drink the cup of sorrow the more cheerfully when we remember that our Father has given it. Not by resisting or avoiding the correcting hand, but by reposing in it, find we peace. What joy in surrendering, because it is the will of Him who loves us with an infinite love! In losing the thing we gain God. "There is in man a Higher than love of happiness—he can do without happiness, and instead thereof find Blessedness! Which God-inspired doctrine are you honored to be taught; and broken with manifold merciful afflictions, even until you become contrite and learn it—the Self in you needed to be annihilated. On the roaring billows of Time you are not engulfed, but borne aloft into the azure of Eternity. This is the everlasting Yes wherein all contradiction is solved." (Carlyle.) It is nobler and easier to carry the cross than drag it; to embrace sorrow as a Father's gift, than submit to it as a Ruler's fiat. In accepting His chastisements, as well as "in keeping His commandments, there is great reward." Let us carry all our trials up to the "exceeding high mountain" of our Father's will, and they shall become transfigured as was the homely garb of Christ by the dazzling splendors with which angels are enrobed. Gethsemane will be glorified. Instead, then, of sitting down in listless woe, with profitless longing for rest beyond the grave, let us find comfort in doing the will of God now. Life is wasted if we spend it |