| Making the Most of Life |
Chapter 1 |
Page 7 |
We must get the same spirit in us if we would become in any large and true sense a blessing to the world. We must die to live. We must lose our life to save it. We must lay self on the altar to be consumed in the fire of love, in order to glorify God and do good to men. Our work may be fair, even though mingled with self; but it is only when self is sacrificed, burned on the altar of consecration, consumed in the hot flames of love, that our work becomes really our best, a fit offering to be made to our King.
We must no fear that such sacrifice, such renunciation and annihilation of self, we shall lose ourselves. God will remember every deed of love, every forgetting of self, every emptying out of life. Though we work in obscurest places, where no human tongue shall ever voice our praise, still there is a record kept, and some day rich and glorious reward will be given. Is not God’s praise better than man’s?
“Ungathered beauties of a bounteous earth,
Wild flowers which grow on mountain paths untrod,
White water lilies looking up to God
From solitary tarns–and human worth
Doing meek duty that no glory gains,
Heroic souls in secret places sown,
To live, to suffer, and to die unknown–
Are not that loveliness and all these pains
Wasted? Alas, then does it not suffice
That God is on the mountain, by the lake,
And in each simple duty, for whose sake
His children give their very blood as price?
The Father sees. If this does not repay,
What else? For plucked flowers fade and praises slay.”
Mary’s ointment was wasted when she broke the vase and poured it upon her Lord. Yes; but suppose she had left the ointment in the unbroken vase? What remembrance would it then have had? Would there have been any mention of it on the Gospel pages? Would her deed of careful keeping have been told over all the world? She broke the vase and poured it out; lost it, sacrificed it, and now the perfume fills all the earth. We may keep our life if we will, carefully preserving it from waste; but we shall have no reward, no honour from it, at the last. But if we empty it out in loving service, we shall make it a lasting blessing to the world, and we shall be remembered forever.
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