March 6

True service lives for ever

“Thine alms are had in remembrance in the sight of God” (Acts 10:31).
“This also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her”(Mark 14:9).

No work done for Christ perishes. No action that helps to mold the deathless mind of a saint of God is ever lost. Live for Christ in the world and you carry with you into eternity all the results of the world’s business that are worth the keeping. The river of life sweeps on, but the gold grains it held in solution are left behind deposited in the holy heart. “The world passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.”
Worldly sharpness, acuteness, versatility, are not the qualities in request in the world to come. The honor, fame, respect, obsequious homage that attend worldly greatness up to the grave’s brink will not follow it one step beyond. If this be all that we have gained by the toil of our hand or the sweat of our brow, the hour is fast coming when we shall discover that we have labored in vain and spent our strength for naught.


But while these pass, there are other things that remain. Not one unselfish thought, not one kind and gentle word, not one act of self-sacrificing love done for Jesus’ sake in the midst of a man’s common work, but will have left an indelible impress on the soul when he passes out to his eternal destiny.
So live, then, that this may be the result of your labors. So live that your work may become a discipline for that glorious state in which work shall be worship, and labor shall be rest; where the worker shall never quit the temple, nor the worshiper the place of work, because there is “no temple therein; for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it.”
—John Caird.

Consecration is not wrapping one’s self in a holy web in the sanctuary, and then coming forth after prayer and twilight meditation, and saying, “There, I am consecrated.” Consecration is going out into the world where God Almighty is, and using every power for His glory. It is taking all advantages as trust funds—as confidential debts owed to God. It is simply dedicating one’s life, in its whole flow, to God’s service.
—Henry Ward Beecher.

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