Preparation for Service
By MARY E. KENNIBURGH
To all of us has come the commission, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature;” and “lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world;” and all who have heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” and who have sincerely responded, “Here am I; send me,” have felt the need of a careful preparation for this the noblest of all work. Christ has said, “Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed.” So God wants us to be able and efficient workers who can hold up the light of gospel truth in this generation of popular error and superstition. All workmen require a certain amount of training to fit them for the vocation they have chosen. Some require comparatively little, others years of patient toiling. What should be our preparation who expect to become co-workers with Christ in the saving of souls from death? The disciples were plying their trade of fishermen when Christ offered them a preparation which would make them fishers of men. The preparation is the foundation on which we must work. As many a block of pure marble is rendered worthless through the unskilful artist, so many a young life, which might have done efficient work in the Master’s vineyard, has been rendered useless through a wrong course of training. Christ was the greatest missionary the world has ever known, and so every Christian, if he would be a true follower of the Master, must be a missionary. Since Christ gave his life for us, we must, if we would be true to our Christian principles, be willing to give our service, and our lives, if need be, to save our fellow creatures. To all God has given a talent; to some he has given more, and by the parable of the talents we know that God expects us to use them to the best of our ability. We will be rewarded, not according to the little use we made of a great number of talents, but of the great use which we have made of our few talents. As spiritual things are separate from worldly things, so a spiritual education must be entirely separate from a worldly education. The latter fits one better to enjoy the pleasures of a mortal life, the former the eternal pleasures of an immortal life. To those whom God calls for a special work he also gives the preparation necessary for it. Oftentimes it is not the kind of training that the human mind craves; but it is necessary to fit us for the work that God has assigned us. Abraham was led out from his father’s house to receive his training as he wandered from place to place, a stranger in a strange land, relying solely upon the promise God had made him; and from a doubting, wavering follower, his preparation led him to the sublimest heights of faith, where he accepted the promises of God, and believed his children would be as numberless as the stars in the vast firmament above him, while as yet he had no child. God’s ways are not man’s ways, and his preparation for Jacob was twenty years of service as a servant in the house of his father-in-law. From an avaricious and greedy man Jacob’s training transformed him into an earnest and faithful follower of Christ, who could wrestle with God and prevail. Joseph’s path to honor lay through the weary and toilsome years of slavery, and the darker years in a gloomy Egyptian prison. What a contrast it must have been to the boy so tenderly cared for by a doting father! From a self-sufficient and exacting youth he was transformed through fiery trials to a noble, unselfish man well qualified to conduct the affairs of a great nation at its crisis. The formation of a noble character is the work of a lifetime, and must be the result of diligent and persevering effort. God gives the opportunities; success depends upon the use made of them. Moses received the best education, no doubt, that Egypt afforded, because it was expected that he would one day be their king. And when at the age of forty years he entered the school of God in the wilderness, it was to spend another forty years in becoming acquainted with the ways of God, and in unlearning much that he had learned at the court of Pharaoh. “His education had made deep impressions upon his developing mind, and had molded to some extent his habits and character. Time, change of surroundings, and communion with God only could remove these impressions. It required on the part of Moses himself a struggle as for life to renounce them and accept truth; but God would be his helper when the conflict should be too severe for human strength; while alone among the mountains, and wandering from place to place with his flock, God was his teacher. His pride and self-sufficiency were swept away; he became patient, reverent, humble, and meek above all that were upon the face of the earth, yet strong in faith and courage. He became a leader, not the kind that, perhaps, he first expected to be, but a captain to lead a tribe of slaves from their land of bondage.” Moses had turned from courtly honors and from a prospective kingdom in Egypt to cast in his lot with God’s chosen people. His life was full of vicissitudes and hardships, yet he did not regret the choice he had made. His preparation was so thorough that but one wrong act marred his record, and because of that act he lay down to rest upon the summit of lonely Mount Nebo, soon to awaken to an inheritance far more glorious than the earthly Canaan. John the Baptist’s life of privation and hardship in the wilderness, which was spent in close communion with God and nature, fitted him to be the forerunner of the Christ, the one who would herald his coming to that proud and wicked generation. And does his preparation seem incomplete to us when in Herod’s gloomy prison his faith faltered, and doubts arose to cloud and darken the bright horizon of his faith?