Reach Out for Heaven

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 20, 1865

Reach Out for Heaven

REACH OUT FOR HEAVEN.—You long for the bread of God to come down from Heaven and give you life, such as the angels enjoy, do you? You long for a warmer, tenderer, more unselfish, and sympathetic heart, for more of true neighborly love, do you? You yearn for it, and pray for it? Then go out of yourself, and try to live for others. Try to do something to dissipate the darkness, to lessen the burdens, to alleviate the sorrows, to multiply the joys, to smooth the rugged pathway of some neighbor. Try to extract some rankling thorn, or to pour a little oil and wine into some bruised and wounded soul. Seek out some friendless and needy object, on whom to bestow your sympathy, your generosity, your offices of kindness. And you need not go far; such objects exist in scores all around you—objects needing sympathy and comfort, if not material aid. Do this, and see how your cold and hard-hearted selfishness will begin to diminish, and your neighborly love to increase! See how the windows of heaven will be opened within you, and your before waste and barren soul begin to be flooded with the gracious outpourings of love from on high! It is the outgoings of our own thoughts and feelings, with intent to bless, that cause the plentiful incomings of the divine love and mercy, agreeable to that divine declaration, “Give, and it shall be given unto you.” —Religious Magazine.