JOY IN SERVICE | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 7, 1881

JOY IN SERVICE.

THE spirit which accompanies an action is often as important as the action itself. Two children in a well-ordered household may be equally obedient, so far as outward conduct is concerned, but one may keep the paternal commandment with inward rebellion, or with perfunctory indifference, while the other accepts every duty, and fulfills every obligation with gladness and gratitude. There is a vast difference between the enforced submission of a slave and the sweet compliance of a son. The grudging payment of tribute-money by a captive is quite other than the gift-making of a loyal subject. In this world there is a great deal of service in which there is no joy, while still it is true that the highest, fullest, and noblest service is always that into which the joy-element enters largely.

We see this constantly in the common-places of daily life. Mutual sacrifices consecrate family intercourse, and loving self-denials crown the hardest labor as with flowers. The husband who has toiled all day does not murmur, though he must spend the entire night in a vigil beside the bed of a sick and suffering wife. The young mother whose girlish years have been like a gay procession marching to music, with banners flung to the breeze, is content, ay, and blessed, when she is tied fast in her nursery. Her arms cradle a helpless babe for whose comfort she performs offices that tax her strength, absorb her time, and cut her off from social pleasures which she once enjoyed; but she does not repine. The compensations which flow in upon her heart far outnumber the limitations, withdrawals, and burdens of her maternity. Look at the good physician as he goes from house to house in his rounds, or from cot to cot in the hospital, to battle with disease and alleviate pain. His is no fair-weather work. It enlists his severest efforts, it engages his utmost powers, it draws upon his resources of every degree,—physical, intellectual and spiritual. Yet who shall say that it is barren of delights? Ask him about it, and he will tell you that he often drains the most ecstatic cup that ever touches human lips,—the cup of the conqueror. He will say that it is worth broken nights and sleepless dawns and laborious days to vanquish death, and give a dear one back to those who love him, from the edge of the grave. He will even bear witness, supported here by the accordant testimony of his profession, that when all that skill and knowledge can prompt is done, and done in vain, that even there there is a satisfaction in having soothed where he could not cure, and assisted where he could not save.

We have lately seen a beautiful rhythmic illustration of the spirit we mean in a little poem, in which a farmer is supposed to be talking to the wife whom he tenderly cherishes.

“Through all the changing seasons, My pride is, and has been, To keep thee cool when suns are hot, And warm when nights are keen; Bend down to make thy burden mine, Or lend my cloak to thee, In summer or in winter, For so should it be. “I plow the stiff, tough fallow, And toil and moil and sow; You peer for nests through blackthorn boughs, And where first roses blow. I'll do the work, you do the play, Then home at eve with me, A warm hand in a cold one, For so should it be. “My steady strokes in autumn Shall fell the rattling grain, And you shall tumble down the shocks, Nor set one up again. I'll store red apples like your cheeks, And give the best to thee, From a tired hand to a fresh one, For so should it be.”

It is this feeling of real pleasure in service for another, or for others, which dignifies endeavor, and glorifies the homeliest toil. Do we have enough of it in our work for Jesus? Is there any reason why Christian work should ever be joyless work? Do we not dishonor our Lord when we engage in his service as though it were all hardness and warfare, and hopeless, dull, and somber resignation? Who has an equal right with us to sing as we journey? Like Cromwell's soldiers, we should march to the fiercest encounters with the enemy, uplifting psalms of faith and defiance. Like David, we should be ready to exclaim, at every crisis of life, "Because thou hast been my help, therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice." The child of God is the one person in the universe who can understand Paul's terse exclamation, "Rejoice evermore." For nobody else, in view of the clouds and darkness, and the mystery which surrounds so many of God's apparent dealings with men, can accept each event as it comes without faltering, and with thanksgiving. Dr. Bushnell said, in one of his sermons, that nothing in the world is really luminous to the mind unillumined by religion.

We may conclude the sentence, and say that to a mind illumined by faith nothing in the world is opaque. Everywhere the sun shines. Everywhere the vision of attendant angels is waiting just beyond the immediate clouds. Illness, losses, bereavements, disappointments, may come, but God is over them, and the soul hid with Christ in God is happy through them all.

The sweetest songs we have ever heard have come in intermittent notes, through the fragrant summer dusk, from groves and thickets, where the singer dwelt unseen. So have some of life's gladdest and most exultant strains come from the sick-chambers, and from experiences of tribulation and distress. For the joy that was set before him, our Lord endured the sharpest pangs of woe; and for the joy that shall be their reward, his followers may well bear patiently and calmly whatever of reverse, or trial, or suffering may be their portion here.

We hear much of personal magnetism. Personal magnetism is of two kinds, the attractive and the repellant. In our church relations, in our Bible classes, and among the wee ones who throng around us in the eager confidence of childhood, let us use the attractive kind. Who can resist the influence which is genial, amiable, heavenly?

We have just passed through a long, cold winter. The land has worn the white mantle of the snow from Maine to Florida. On the first of March the winds blew and the storms were fierce in many an inland town and on many a surf-tossed beach. Nevertheless the spring is here. Presently there will be jasmine in the southern forests, violets on Virginia slopes, arbutus in northern pine-groves. There will be rollicking robins and merry bluebirds, and a world of blossoms and music. The sunbeams and the south wind will not come with stir nor sound of a victorious army, but their bugles never call retreat. The joyful service of the wakening season is here, and a million forces are even now at work to make ready for the fruitage and the harvest that God has promised. Let us too be glad and work joyfully, doing what we do "heartily as to the Lord, and not unto men."—S. S. Times.