Sensitivity and Selfishness
It is good to have a sensitive soul, because such a soul may be made very useful for God. Hold it open to receive rays of light from the eternal throne. Let those rays print upon the sensitive plate of our soul His own divine character in all its beauty. Let us be sensitive toward the miseries, the wants, the needs, the sorrows, of other souls, quick to respond, not alone to their vocal needs, but to their unspoken heart-cries. But thus to do means that selfishness must be obliterated, crushed, crucified. It will seem almost cruel work to do it. In our sensitiveness we suffer so keenly, we magnify our troubles. Like Jerusalem of old, we stand in the highways and call to the passers-by and ask, "Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow?" Some other soul comes to us with perhaps a casual tale of suffering; we hardly wait for its relation before we must needs tell him of our greater sorrow. Mayhap the tale he tells us is of some other soul who has touched his sympathies, but we drown his mission in the flood of our own grievances. O, let us smother the selfishness; let it die; let it be put to death by the Spirit; forgotten in the needs of others.