| Things to Live For |
Chapter 1 |
Page 7 |
It is indeed worth while to be a friend. It is to come into people’s lives with hallowed and hallowing influences, and then never again to go out of them. For to be a friend at all is to say forever in the life. God never takes from us a friend He gives. Therefore the privilege granted to a few rare spirits of being the friend of many people is on of earth’s most sacred gifts. To stand by others in their time of joy and in their hour of faintness; to guide them when the way is perilous; to comfort them in the day of sorrow; to be their counselor in perplexity; to be the inspirer in them of noble thoughts, gentle sentiments, upward influences; and then to sit beside them when they are entering the valley of shadows, – no ministry on earth is holier and diviner than this.
One of our poets has told us that our life is a leaf of white paper on which each of us may write his word or two – and then comes night. What are we writing on our little leaf? It should be something that will bless those who read it. It should be something fit to carry into eternity; it must be most beautiful and worthy for this. It should be something which we shall not be ashamed to meet again, for this leaf will appear in judgment, bearing our word or two, good or bad, just what we put on it; and by this we shall be judged. It is well that we do only things that are worth while; things that are right and true and pure and lovely, things that will last forever. “ The world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.” Lucy Larcom writes:–
“How to make lives worthy the living
The question haunts us every day;
It colors the first blush of sunrise,
It depends the twilight’s last ray.
There is nothing that brings us a drearier pain
Than the thought, ‘We have lived, we are living in vain.’
“We need, each and all, to be needed,
To feel we have something to give
Toward soothing the moan of earth’s hunger;
And we know that then only we live
When we feed one another as we have been fed,
From the hand that gives body and spirit their bread.”
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