| Things to Live For |
Chapter 16 |
Page 5 |
Perhaps we do not often think of the responsibility of being a friend. We like to have persons come to us, and trust us, and love us, and look to us for whatever friendship can give or do. But we do not thinks what it means to take a soul in this way into our influence, to become friend, for example, to a young life that turns to us with confidence and yearning. It is a sacred trust. We are responsible for all we do that may influence, impress, color, or sway our new friend’s life. Are we worthy to be friend to this young life? Are our hands clean? Are they gentle? Are they strong? Will the life be helped, inspired, beautiful, enriched, lifted near to God by our friendship?
Must we not confess that Christ is the only one to whom any life may be committed with absolute confidence that no hurt shall ever come to it? No most humane surgeon has such skill in binding up wounds or in treating sickness as has the Lord Jesus Christ in dealing with our lives. All the best things in friendship are in him. “The chief want in life,” a great thinker has said, “is somebody who shall make us do the best we can.” Such a friend is Christ. He never makes life easy for us, as sometimes we mistakenly do for those we love, hurting the, weakening their character, by our over help. Christ inspires us always to do our best.
Whatever sweet human friendships we may form, and whatever these may mean to us, it is only by committing our life into the hands of Christ that there ever can be absolute safety in this world so full of evil, or that our life ever can reach its best possibilities.
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