p. 13 | How Christ Makes Something of Us

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 7, 1907

How Christ Makes Something of Us

An English preacher used the following illustration: “Once there was a brier growing in the ditch, and there came along a gardener with his spade. As he dug round it and lifted it out, the brier said to itself: ‘What is he doing that for? Doesn’t he know that I am only an old, worthless brier?’ But the gardener took it and planted it amid his flowers, while the brier said, ‘What a mistake he has made, planting an old brier like myself among such rose trees as these!’ But the gardener came once more with his keen-edged knife, made a slit in the brier, and, as we say in England, ‘budded’ it with a rose, and by and by, when summer came, lovely roses were blooming on that old brier. Then the gardener said, ‘Your beauty is not due to that which came out, but to that which I put into you.’”

This is just what Christ is doing all the time with poor human lives. They seem to be of no use, with no hope that they will ever be of use. Then Christ takes them in hand, pours his love upon them, lifts them up out of the dust, puts something of his own life into them, and by and by they begin to be like him, little branches of his own beautiful life.—Western Christian Advocate.