RELIGION IN COMMON THINGS.
By L. A. Hansen
L. A. HANSEN.
(Nashville, Tenn.) THE life which is “by the faith of the Son of God” is lived “in the flesh.” Gal. 2:20. It is this material body, with its earthly members, that the Lord must use by which to manifest His life. These hands, feet, lips, eyes, and ears are to be His instruments. Christian living is not an ideal state, to be realized on some plane above that of common existence. It deals with the most common things—the very ordinary conditions and circumstances of life. It does not await some future state of glorification, when we shall be different beings from that which we now are, neither is it merely a mental acquiescence in the word and will of God, nor holy rapture, nor meditative piety. It concerns the ever-present now, and the commonplace affairs and conditions of all our surroundings; it is to be lived right where we are and in this mortal flesh. The common round of every-day life may become monotonous. Ordinary tasks and duties may appear trivial, and seem to have no relation to spiritual matters. But here is where we are, and it is right here, for the present at least, that the Lord wants to use us. Right where we are now living, the life of Christ is to be manifest. As far as we are now concerned, there is no place of so much importance to us as this place, and it is this place and this condition that God must use if He uses any. We are not living in some future condition that may seem to us to be better suited for the realization of our ideal. We cannot well imagine Jesus standing at His workbench listlessly handling His tools, with a far-away look, thinking of some future time when He would take up missionary work. He was just as obedient to carry water for His mother, or to sweep up the shavings in the carpenter shop, as He was to perform the duties of His public ministry. The thirty years of His home life, spent amid very ordinary surroundings, among common people, doing the every-day tasks, were just as important to Him as were the three years and a half spent in preaching and healing. One was just as much His mission as the other. But how many of our young people, while in training for the work of the Lord, have their eyes set on some point in the future, when they will be prepared to fill an important position, and at the same time perhaps they fail to see, all about them, many opportunities for usefulness! Ability, worth, or fitness is not conferred suddenly upon a person. Reading books and passing examinations are not all the essentials for developing workers. The little things, as we speak of them, that are left undone, or are done carelessly, determine, perhaps, more than anything else, our qualifications as workers. It was the privilege of the writer to spend some time in training at the Battle Creek Sanitarium. The first four months were spent in the Bacteriological Laboratory. Dr. Heald and others attended to the particular work of growing germs, and making important tests, upon which the lives of patients might depend. At first I swept and mopped the floor and washed test tubes. The floor and the tubes had to be clean in order to secure accurate results. It was not enough to sweep the floor clean only when some one was looking, nor to wash the tubes just enough to pass inspection. The Sanitarium work is God’s work, and the Sanitarium is His. The floor of the Sanitarium has to be swept just as other work has to be done. Everywhere, there are floors to sweep, and dirty things to be cleaned. These things have to be done, and some one must do them. The only right way to do them is to do them right. It may take just as much grace to do these things right as it does to do things that are regarded greater. Greatness does not consist so much in doing great things as it does in doing all things in a great way. “Thou hast been faithful over a few things” was the commendation for the way in which things had been done, and not for their magnitude.