WORKING FOR THE LORD

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 13, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 32.

WORKING FOR THE LORD.

“What does the Lord want me to do?” Mary Gray asked the question in an earnest, troubled tone, which told that she had sought, but had not found, the true basis of life, or learned that all true service to the Lord rests upon the faithful doing of daily duties.

“The best you can just where you are, ‘Who does the best his circumstance allows Does well, acts nobly; angels could do no more,’” replied her companion. “Tho you be not called to any great work, as the world judges,—very few are—yet you have your daily duties, your home work. If you do this well, and make the little niche you fill bright and warm with loving sympathies and kindliness, if your ear be quick to hear the cry for help, and your hand ready to do whatever cometh for it to do, what more could you do anywhere?”

“But others do so much wider work! They get so many more opportunities than I can!” answered Mary, still in a troubled voice.

“God does not ask you to do another’s work, or to do what you might easily do in another’s circumstances,” was the assured reply. “He asks of us the use of no talent which we have not. He simply asks that we shall each take our own life, our day and our opportunity, and make it luminous with love and good-will. He will never compare your work with, or judge it by, that of another who may have wider opportunities, or greater talent. He knows us, each one, Mary; O, the comfort of the thought! knows our strength and our opportunities, and when we do the best we can, each in our own place and way, we but serve him.

“It is the present work that is important and that must be faithfully done. We never come to greater work by neglect of that which lies nearest our hand. Don’t look upon your home work as being of little importance, or think you must have a larger field if you work for the Lord.

“George MacDonald says, ‘If I can put some touch of a rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God.’ In what better way can you do this than by making a happy home for those who look to you for home joys and comforts? Be not fearful as to results. When you have done the best you can to have the results all right, it is all that is required of you. The rest is God’s—can he not see to his own?”

The talk ended here, but Mary Gray went back to her work with fresh courage, and a deeper insight into the real meaning of life and service, realizing that “The common deeds of the common day Ring the bells in the far away,” and trying to make their chiming sweet and clear.—Zion’s Watchman.