The Time for Toil...

Taken at Fillmore Glen State Park in Moravia, NY

 

We who follow the Crucified are not here to make a pleasant thing of life; we are called to suffering for the sake of a suffering, sinful world. The Lord forgive us our shameful evasions and hesitations.

His brow was crowned with thorns. Do we not seek rosebuds for our crowning?

His hands were pierced with nails. Are our hands ringed with jewels?

His feet were bare and bound. Do our feet walk delicately?

What do we know of travail? of tears that scald before they fall? of heartbreak? of being scorned? God forgive us our love of ease.

God forgive us that so often we turn our faces from a life that is even remotely like His. Forgive us that we all but worship comfort, the delight of the presence of loved ones, possessions, treasures on earth.

Far, far from our prayers too often is any thought of a prayer for a love which will lead us to give one whom we love to follow our Lord to Gethsemane, to Calvary--perhaps because we have never been there ourselves.

-Amy Carmichael-

 

This is the lesson He has been pressing hard into my heart the past few years as He

has worked at weeding out from me that which would keep me in a state of

passive immature 'babyhood' instead of growing up in Him,

digging in my heels for the climb higher,

willing to let go of whatever would hinder me from

working the Road to Glory,

helping the weak and blind...

 

I am here to say that if we let Him have His way with us,

it WILL be painful to the flesh

but such a beautiful view that I cannot keep silent about it.

 

There is weeping in sheaf gathering.

There is strenuous toil and weariness from nights of

shortened sleep in the interest of prayer and soul seeking.

There comes a day when to sacrifice time, energy, sleep, money

or anything else in order to preach the Gospel of the kingdom

to the people in your town (including your own children)

 is what will be required of you.

 

Do your steps point your neighbor to Jesus?

 

Holding onto these things, including my own selfish desire

to nurse hurts from yesterday, and my insistence that God gives me what I think

 is best for me and my family will get me nowhere

in my own walk with the Savior.

And all the while that I am refusing to grow up in Him

and believe that He has me exactly where He wants me to be,

people in my town are dying and going to a Christless eternity.

 

That's too sobering to ignore.

 

 

"Let us, then, be up and doing,

with a heart for any fate;

still achieving, still pursuing,

 learn to labor and to wait." 

 

Henry Longfellow