NO matter how earnestly we may love our life-calling, and rejoice in our chosen field of activity, there are hours when the easiest task becomes irksome and its daily repetition seems unbearable. However healthy the soul and robust the moral nature, a constant onslaught of sorrow may wound like a poisoned dart, filling the soul with painful forebodings. Beholding the transitoriness of life, and the apparent frailty and uncertainty of those things upon which we place our heaviest dependence, we become depressed, and feel that nothing is permanent and that life’s products are but empty shadows. These are common experiences, and their frequent repetition does not lessen their depressive power. Coming upon us to-day they are just as hurtful as when they challenged us for the first time.
That we may overcome these disagreeable tendencies, and live a life victorious, Paul revealed the secret of his own achievements. To him work never became drudgery, sorrow never festered or left a feverish wound, while even the most commonplace incident was of the deepest significance because he had learned to acquire and maintain a deep perspective that placed each moment of time in the white light of eternity. He believed that we are not created for the hour but for the centuries, and that we must work not so much for the present hour as for the years that are yet to be. The one purpose of every word and deed, to Paul, was to “show the ages to come the exceeding riches of God’s grace.”
As the prolific and luxuriant vegetation of the carboniferous age bordered the lakes with ferns, the rivers with reeds, and the hillsides and valleys with gigantic trees of grotesque form, that, in the ages to come, man might have the exhaustless coalbeds to protect him from the cold; as the coral polyps, buried beneath the waves, love and labor and die, generation after generation, until a coral island lifts its head to receive the kisses of the passing waves and extend the arms of a protecting harbor, that, in the ages to come, the storm-tossed mariners may find safe shelter against the stormy wind and wave; so you and I are to love, and labor, and die, not for ourselves, but that the ages to come, through our goodness and fidelity, may behold the riches of God’s grace.
This does not mean that we are to so bury the present in the future that our lives shall consist of nothing save vague dreams and idle contemplations. It means the opposite. We are to magnify the present and give it increasing value by crowding it with an eternal significance. We are not to drop to-day into the silent ocean of the future and see it fade from sight, but into to-day we are to crowd to-morrow and all the other to-morrows that shall follow. Instead of losing the drop of water in Niagara we are to crowd all the dash and splendor and power of Niagara into the single drop of water; instead of losing the dew in the ocean, we crowd the ocean into the dewdrop; instead of burying the present into the future, we gather all eternity and crowd it into a single lifetime, so that every second of time becomes as precious as a thousand years of eternity, and the smallest task we have to perform becomes as sacred as the songs of the angels.
When one possesses this conception of life that crowds a vast eternity within the compass of a single individual life, no toil can ever become drudgery. Every deed has divine significance. The most ordinary task will be performed carefully, knowing that it must stand the scrutiny and criticisms of the passing centuries. We labor then with the various elements of life, as the artists of Venice toil with their priceless mosaics, willing to spend a lifetime of painstaking endeavor in forming a single feature of a saint, knowing that long after they themselves have ceased to toil the wisdom of untold centuries shall review their efforts to either praise or blame. Hitherto we have despised the commonplace things that fell to our hands, while we busied ourselves searching for some great thing worthy of our effort, with the result that nothing has been accomplished; now we find, that that only is truly great which is commonplace. Divine opportunities are everywhere. In the low-browed man upon the street we see the possibility of an ennobled and redeemed humanity. In the waif, crying from hunger, we see the center of world-wide and eternal destinies. Words are winged messengers, so we learn to study them with care, and speak them with the precision with which a musician strikes his chords. Divine destinies are depending upon the perfection with which we toil, adding a charm to every endeavor that never fades with weariness. There can be no drudgery to him who has a perspective eternity long.
This conception of life which Paul gives us will carry us unharmed through all the misfortunes of life. It is impossible for us to escape sorrow. By rigid economy we may save our money only to have it stolen by a deceitful friend; we may build a home, only to find it purchased and occupied by another; loved ones, more precious than our own lives, have been lured from our side by the hand of death. These hours are naturally dark and of tortuous length, and if it were not for the fact that we have learned to think in terms of eternity, we would die of a broken heart. But we do not die; we pass through them with triumphant tread. The soul sobs but does not bleed; the heart hurts but does not break. We are not living for this world alone; our horizon has been widened because we have been lifted to a higher level; we can now see two worlds; our faith sweeps onward as far as God can think. The earthly home for which we planned and toiled has passed into the hands of another, but we rejoice in the knowledge that we have a home, not made with toiling, blistered hands of earth, but one eternal in the heavens. Our loved ones no longer greet us at the table or occupy their accustomed places in the family circle, but we have not lost them forever. They have simply passed from time into eternity, and because we also are the children of eternity, they are still our own, and we shall see them once again. Thank God for the transforming power that comes into every human life when, by divine aid, one crowds eternal significance into his days, and works, not for himself, but for “the ages to come.”
Paul’s view of life enables us to find perfect satisfaction in working with the frailties of time in building that which is immortal in character and service. Possessed with such a purpose, the spider’s web becomes a cable, dust becomes slabs of marble, and seconds becomes decades. There is nothing more fragile than a word, spoken in stammering weakness, but with a trembling desire to be of service, yet out of one word fitly spoken may be created an influence that sweeps heaven and earth. A faltering word of Christian testimony was spoken by a godly man made weak by an unconquerable embarrassment, but his utterance proved mighty. Lodging in the heart of Charles Spurgeon, it started him on his wonderful career that is yet shaking all Christendom. The smile of the face is far more delicate than the frailest blossom that opens its soft petals in obedience to the caressing influence of the sun, for its existence is but for the fraction of a second; yet one kindly, love-illumined look has been the force that has lifted multitudes of mortals out of despondency and uselessness, and made them the creators of mighty moral and religious forces. It was a smile that saved John G. Wooley for the cause of temperance. A smile, and a word, and the gift of a handkerchief were all that Frances E. Willard used to redeem one of the most notorious characters of Chicago, and make her one of God’s ministers of light among the fallen.
When one learns to live with the light of eternity flooding his pathway there is not an event in life so small and insignificant that he cannot employ it to create, and afterward use it, to sustain eternal influences. There is joy now in living for Christ, but let us live, not for that joy alone, but that, in the ages to come, we may show the exceeding riches of God’s grace. Let them, through us, behold what the grace of God can do to save, to keep, to empower, and to make immortal such sin-smitten ones as we have been. This is the secret for making toil pleasant, sorrows helpless, and the humblest effort an enterprise of such character as crowds earth with richer meaning, and fills the heavens with new-found joys. Show them that the greatest of all known forces is a Christ-filled life.