IMPERFECT WORKERS by J. R. Miller, D.D.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 7, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 27.

IMPERFECT WORKERS.

By J. R. Miller, D.D.

Some one has said that many of the most beautiful things in heaven are earth’s blunders—things God’s children, with loving heart, tried to do to please God. The blunders tell of love, and are dear to God. I know a room in which the most sacred and precious household treasure is a piece of puckered sewing. A little child one day picked up the mother’s sewing—some simple thing she had been working on—and, after half an hour’s quiet, brought it to the mother and gave it to her, saying, “Mama, I’s been helping you ’cause I love you so.” The stitches were long, and the sewing was puckered, but the mother saw only beauty in it all; for it told of her child’s love and eagerness to please her. That night the little one sickened, and soon went home. No wonder the mother keeps that piece of bungled sewing among her rarest treasures. Nothing that the most skilful hands have wrought, among all her household possessions, means to her half so much as that puckered seam.

May not this be the way in which God looks at His children’s homeliest and humblest efforts to do things for Him? Only think how faulty even the best Christian work done in this world must seem to Christ! How full of unwisdom, how foolish, much of it! How mixed with self and vanity, how untactful, how indiscreet, how without prayer and love, how ignorant, how ungentle! Of course we can see many faults in the work of others, but we should remember always how poor, mistaken, unworthy—how imperfectly done, is even our best service as it looks to Christ’s pure and holy eyes. We should remember, too, that He does not chide us for it, does not blame us for doing so ill the sacred things He gave us to do, does not talk complainingly to the angels and the apostles about our mistakes. O, no! Many of our poor blunders, our most faulty pieces of work, are

held as among our Master’s most holy treasures in heaven. He uses our blundering efforts, if only love and faith be in them, to bless others, to do good, to build up His kingdom. He is saving the world to-day, not through faultless work of angels, but through the poor, ignorant, flawed, oft-time foolish work of disciples who love Him and want to help Him. He puts the treasures of grace for the world into earthen vessels.—J. R. Miller, D.D.