| Things to Live For |
Chapter 9 |
Page 5 |
When we think of this quality in all our words, touches, acts, looks, and influences, how serious a thing it is to live and mingle with others! No act is more solemn than the taking into our life of a new friend or companion, – one who is to listen to our words, to see the tings we do, to receive instruction, advice, or counsel from us, to be influenced by our life. When God sends to us a friend or a new acquaintance – some one who is brought thus into the range of our influence, he has a purpose in so doing. He wants us to be a blessing to the person. He wants us to speak wholesome words, to give wise counsel, and to exert an uplifting influence, leaving impression upon the life which shall add to its beauty and blessing. But suppose that we fail in this, and that, instead, we give wrong touches to the life, drop the wrong seeds, exert an unwholesome influence, leave sinister impressions, what must our accounting be when we stand before God? The new life that comes into the circle of your friendship, companionship, or acquaintanceship, comes as a sacred trust, with a holy charge from Christ, whose the life is. You become in a very sacred sense its guardian. Your mission is to do it good, to be a blessing to it, to drop into it only seeds of purity, truth, holiness, and love. Woe be to you if the seeds your hand lets fall are seeds of evil, which shall grow into hurt or marring.
We are not done with life as we live it. We shall meet our acts and words and influences again. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” He shall reap the same that he sows, and he himself shall be the reaper. We go on carelessly, never dreaming that we shall see our seeds again, or have anything more to do with them. Then some day we come upon an ugly plant growing somewhere; and when we ask, “What is this?” comes the answer, “I am one of your plants. You dropped the seed which grew into me.” We must beware what we do. We shall have to eat the fruit that grows from our sowing and planting.
There are many phases of this truth. Jesus said, “With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” A man who is cruel reaps cruelty. A man who is merciful finds mercy. David unsheathed the sword in wrong against a subject, and the sword departed not from his house forever. He dishonored the happy home of another, and his own home was dishonored. Paul was a persecutor, and persecution followed him until it smote him to death. What we give to others, sooner or later comes back again to our own bosom. What we sow, that we reap.
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