“We can best minister to Him by helping them
Who dared not touch his hallowed garment’s hem.
Their lives are even as ours–one piece, one plan.
Him we know not, him shall we never know
Till we behold him in the least of these
Who suffer or who sin. In sick souls he
Lies bound and sighing; asks our sympathies;
Their grateful eyes thy benison bestow,
Bother and Lord,– ‘Ye did it unto me.’”
Jesus taught that we should live, “not to be ministered unto, but to minister.” This is a lesson that it is very hard to learn. It is easy enough to utter sentimental platitudes about the nobleness of service, but no one can truly live after this heavenly pattern until his being is saturated with the divine Spirit.
Just what is the lesson that our Lord sets us we should try definitely to understand. It is, in a word, so to relate ourselves to others that our chief thought concerning them shall be, not how we may get pleasure, profit, honor, or advancement from them for ourselves, but how we may give them pleasure, do them good, or put honor upon them. If we have this spirit, we shall see in every person who comes within the circle of our life one to whom we owe love and service.
God has so ordered that we cannot love and serve him, and not also love and serve our fellow men. Jesus made this very plain I his picture of the last judgment, when he said that he is hungry in every hungry little one of his; that he is sick in every least one of his who is sick; that in the stranger who comes to our door he stands before us, waiting for the hospitality of love. In serving his, we are serving him; in neglecting his, we neglect him. We cannot fulfill our duty by loving Christ and serving him, while we ignore our fellow men. He accepts no such service. If we say we love him, he points to the needy, the hungry, the sick, the burdened ones, the suffering all about us, and says: “Show your love to these. I do not need service now, but these need it. Serve them in my name. Look at each one of them as if I were myself the one in pain or need, and do for these, my brethren, just what you would do for me if I were actually in their condition.: We cannot get away from this relationship to Christ. It binds us to every other life. To act selfishly toward any one is to act selfishly toward Christ. To neglect any one who needs our help is to neglect Christ himself. To do good to any other in Christ’s name is to serve Christ.
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