June 21

Add your light

“I have set thee to be a light” (Acts 13:47).
“Now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light” (Eph. 5:8).

Dwight L. Moody used the following illustration of a great truth: “Away out in the prairie regions, when meetings were held at night in the log schoolhouse, the announcement of the meeting is given out in this way: ‘A meeting will be held by early candlelight.’ The first man who comes brings a tallow dip with him. It does not light the building much, but it is better than none at all. The next man brings his candle, and the next family brings their candles. By the time the house is full there is plenty of light. So if we all shine a little there will be a good deal of light. If we cannot all be lighthouses, any one of us can at any rate be a tallow candle.”

I am but one, but I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But I can do something.
What I can do, I ought to do.
What I ought to do,
God helping me, I will do.
—Motto in an old church.

Suppose we are beginning to feel the splendid conviction that, after all, our obscure life is not to be wasted; that having this ideal principle within it, it may yet be as great in its homely surroundings as the greatest human life—seeing that no man can do more with his life than the will of God—that though we may never be famous or powerful, or called to heroic suffering or acts of self-denial which will vibrate through history; that though we are neither intended to be apostles nor missionaries nor martyrs—but to be common people living in common houses, spending the day in common offices or common kitchens, yet doing the will of God there, we shall do as much as apostle, or missionary, or martyr—seeing that they can do no more than do God’s will where they are, even as we can do as much where we are—and answer the end of our life as truly, faithfully and triumphantly as they.
—Henry Drummond.

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