| Making the Most of Life |
Chapter 16 |
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This same sense of responsibility rests upon every thoughtful Christian who is called to be Christ’s only witness in a place–in a home, in a community, in a store, or school, or shop, or social circle. He is Christ’s only servant there, and he dare not be unfaithful, else the whole work of Christ in that place may fail. He is the one light set to shine there for his Master, and if his light be hidden, the darkness will be unrelieved. So there is special inspiration in this consciousness of being the only one Christ has in a certain place.
There is a sense in which this is true also of every one of us all the time. We really are always the only one Christ ahs at the particular place at which we stand. There may be thousands of other lives about us. We may be only one of a great company, of a large congregation, of a populous community. Yet each one of us has a life that is alone in its responsibility, in its danger, in its mission and duty. There may be a hundred others close beside me, but not one of them can take my place, or do my duty, or fulfill my mission, or bear my responsibility. Though every one of the other hundred does his work, and does it perfectly, my work waits for me, and if I don not do it, it never will be don.
We can understand how that if the great prophet had failed God that day when he was the only one God had to stand for him, the consequences would have been most disastrous; the cause of God would have suffered irreparably. But are we sure that the calamity to Christ’s kingdom would be any less of one of us should fail God in our lowly place any common day?
Stories are told of a child finding a little leak in the dike that shuts off the sea from Holland, and stopping it with his hand till help could come, staying there all the night, holding back the floods with his little hand. It was but a tiny, trickling stream that he held back; yet if he had not done it, it would soon have become a torrent, and before morning the sea would have swept over the land, submerging fields, homes, and cities. Between the sea and all this devastation there was but a boy’s hand. Had the child failed, the floods would have rolled in with their remorseless ruin. We understand how important it was that that boy should be faithful to his duty, since he was the only one God had that night to save Holland.
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