May 1927
331
T h e
K i n g ’ s
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.. M ay 27. "When Paul had gathered a bundle of s t ic k s—Acts 28:3. BUT was it necessary for the great apostle of the Gentiles to pick up sticks for the fire? Was it pot beneath him? Was it consonant with his personal importance* or with the dignity of his sacred calling? .Were there not others-^-soldiers, prisoners, slaves —who could perform so menial an office as the gathering of wopd? Paul did not think so, nor should we. He remembered that he was the minister—the servant, that is—of Him who “came not to be ministered unto, but to minister,” and that, therefore, he was also the servant of all his earthly brethren, To help them in their necessity, to add to their physical comfort and well being, he considered it to be as much a part of his mission as to preach to them the Gospel of Peace. If his Master could wash the disciples’ feet, he jneed have no hesitation about gathering sticks. This is a lesson which some of us need to learn. We are so apt to get an exaggerated idèa (of our own importance.; we are so afraid of compromising ourselves; we shrink so often ‘from anything which Is “infd dig," as wé call it, that we some times forget that after all we are but servants, arid that “the ser vant is not above his Lord.” No’work is;too lowly or too. merdai for the Christian if by doing it he can‘help or benefit his fellow men. The humblest drudgery is divine if it be done in the ser vice of Christ and •humanity. At the Last Day we shall be ashamed, not of the things we have done:.for them, but of the things we were too proud to do. WHO did? The Jews of Thessalonica said it was the apos tles, but they were mistaken. Eve turned the world upside down when she partook of the forbidden fruit, and upside down it has remained until this day: the apostles were trying to turn it right side up. Unsanctified humari*’nature stands upon its head and takes, therefore, an,inverted view of most things. It calls evil “good,” and good “evil,” not out of perversity, but simply be cause they appear so from its point of view. Herice it finds the Bible full of paradox and Christianity replete with contradictions and insoluble mysteries. Here, furthermore, is the secret of its utter untrustworthiness. “It is very natural” has become almost a synonym for “It is very wrong,” not because human nature was ill-arranged by the Creator, but because it has been turned upside down by sin. To take humanity from off its head and set it once more upon its feet; to enable it to .look at things—not with an inverted, but an upright vision—so that it may estimate them—not as they appear to the Devil, but as they are in the sight of God—this is the work of Christianity. Nothing short of this is of any avail: it is of no use to argue with the man of inverted vision; you must set him on his feet. This poor topsy-turvy world of ours will never be an Eden again until it has been turned right side up by Christ. I . . ■ M ay 29. “Some seed fell by the wayside.”—Matt. 13:4. THERE was nothing wrong with the ground itself. There were neither boulders nor thorns to hinder the1growth of the grain; yet there was no fruit. Why ? Because the ever tramping feet of the passers-by had trodden the soil until it was too hard to receive the seed. It could not sink in, so the birds of the air came and “devoured it up.” There are many hearts which are not wilfully bad upon which the Word of God falls without effect. They are simply un fenced hearts, and the thoughts, the pleasures, and all the manifold concerns of earth, tramp, tramp, tramp to and fro over them till they are almost as hard as a M ay 28. “Turned the world upside down.”—Acts 17:6.
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