“They also Serve who only Stand and Wait.”
By M. W. Howard
BRETHREN, no time of seeming inactivity is laid upon you by God without any just reason. It is God calling upon you to do his business by ripening in quiet all your powers for some higher sphere of activity which is about to be opened to you. The time is coming when you shall be called again to the front of the battle. Let that solemn thought of dread, yet kindling expectancy, fill the cup of your life with the inner work of self-development which will make you ready and prepared when your name is called. The eighteen years at Nazareth, what was their result? A few years of action, but of action concentrated, intense, infinite; not one word, not one deed, which did not tell upon the universe forever.—Stopford A. Brooke. When I read the above paragraph, it seemed to speak to me such words of comfort and cheer that I fain would not only transcribe it upon the tablet of my heart, but speed it onward to perform the same sweet mission for other hearts. I am myself undergoing a season of “seeming inactivity;” occasioning, at times, sorrowful self-reproachings, which end only in these reproaches and an indistinct glimmering of a bright emerging; hoping, ever, that future usefulness shall demonstrate that it was indeed a ripening in quiet, of powers for some other sphere of higher activity ere long to be opened. There has, at times, a solemn thought of dread rested upon me, not so much in “kindling expectancy,” as in a suppressed fear, that my “name should not be called again.” And yet I am conscious of an endeavor to have the “inner work of self-development go on, which shall make me ready and prepared” should that time ever come. And I hope and believe that when the way opens I am ready “to step to the front of the battle.” Till which time I rest upon the assured consciousness that, “They also work, who only stand and wait.”