| Making the Most of Life |
Chapter 5 |
Page 7 |
Says a thoughtful writer, speaking of influence: “Let a man press nearer to Christ, and open his nature more widely to admit the energy of Christ, and, whether he knows it or not, – it is better, perhaps, if he does not know it, – he will certainly be growing in power for God with men, and for men with God.” We get power for Christ only as we become filled with the very life of Christ.
Everywhere about us there are lives, cold, and cheerless, and dull, which by the touch of our hand, in loving warmth, in Christ’s name, would be wondrously blessed and transformed. Some one tells of going into a jeweler’s store to look at certain gems. Among other stones he was shown an opal. As it lay there, however, it appeared dull and altogether lusterless. Then the jeweler took it in his hand and held it for some moments, and again showed it to his customer. Now it gleamed and flashed with all the glories of the rainbow. It needed the touch and warmth of a human hand to bring out its iridescence. There are human lives everywhere about us that are rich in their possibilities of beauty and glory. No gems or jewels are so precious; but as we see them in their earthly condition they are dull and lusterless, without brightness or loveliness. Perhaps they are even covered with stain and defiled by sin. Yet they need only the touch of the hand of Christ to bring out the radiance, the loveliness, the beauty of the divine image in them. And you and I must be the hand of Christ to these lusterless or stained lives. Touching them with our warm love, the sleeping splendour that is in them, hidden mayhap under sin’s marring and ruin, will yet shine out, the beginning of glory for them.
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