I even reckon all things as pure loss because of the priceless privilege of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord." (Phil. 3:8) (Weymouth
Shining is always costly. Light comes only at the cost of that which produces it. An unlit candle does no shining. Burning must come before shining. We cannot be of great use to others without cost to ourselves. Burning suggests suffering. We shrink from pain.
We are apt to feel that we are doing the greatest good in the world when we are strong, and able for active duty, and when the heart and hands are full of kindly service.
When we are called aside and can only suffer; when we are sick; when we are consumed with pain; when all our activities have been dropped, we feel that we are no longer of use, that we are not doing anything.
But, if we are patient and submissive, it is almost certain that we are a greater blessing to the world in our time of suffering and pain than we were in the days when we thought we were doing the most of our work. We are burning now, and shining because we are burning. --Evening Thoughts.
The glory of tomorrow is rooted in the drudgery of today.
Many want the glory without the cross, the shining without the burning, but crucifixion comes before coronation.
Have you heard the tale of the aloe plant
Away in the sunny clime
By humble growth of a hundred years
It reaches its blooming time
And then a wondrous bud at its crown
Breaks into a thousand flowers
This floral queen, in its blooming seen
Is the pride of the tropical bowers
But the plant to the flower is sacrifice
For it blooms but once, and it dies.
Have you further heard of the aloe plant
That grows in the sunny clime
How every one of its thousand flowers
As they drop in the blooming time
Is an infant plant that fastens its roots
In the place where it falls on the ground
And as fast as they drop from the dying stem
Grow lively and lovely around
By dying, it liveth a thousand-fold
In the young that spring from the death of the old.
Have you heard the tale of the pelican
The Arabs' Gimel el Bahr
That lives in the African solitudes
Where the birds that live lonely are
Have you heard how it loves its tender young
And cares and toils for their good
It brings them water from mountain far
And fishes the seas for their food.
In famine it feeds them--what love can devise
The blood of its bosom--and, feeding them, dies.
Have you heard this tale--the best of them all
The tale of the Holy and True
He dies, but His life, in untold souls
Lives on in the world anew
His seed prevails, and is filling the earth
As the stars fill the sky above.
He taught us to yield up the love of life
For the sake of the life of love.
His death is our life, His loss is our gain
The joy for the tear, the peace for the pain.
Selected.