| The Ministry of Comfort |
Chapter 21 |
Page 5 |
That is one of the great lessons Jesus would teach us. The secret of such a life is to have and ever to keep in us the heart of a little child. Instead of allowing our spirit to grow bitter when our kindness has been abused, when our love has been repaid with hate, we should take the first opportunity to repeat the kindness and the love, thus overcoming evil with good. The Master said, “Love your enemies, and pray for them that despitefully use you, and persecute you.” That is, if you have an enemy, one in whose breast is bitterness toward you, he is the very man you are to love. If any one has used you badly today, he is the very person you are to pray for tonight when you bow before God.
Some one may say that this is impossible, that no love can endure rejection and unrequiting day after day and lose none of its warmth; that no kindness can meet unkindness, continually, and yet keep all its warmth and generosity undiminished. But St. Paul tells that love suffereth long and is kin, seeketh not its own, is not provoked, taketh not account of evil, beareth all things, endureth all things, never faileth. Christian love is not an earth born affection – it is born out of heaven, out of God’s own heart. Hence it is immortal, its life is inextinguishable, and it cannot perish. Alfred Austin writes:
Yet love can last, yet love can last,
The future be as was the past,
And faith and fondness never know
The chill of dwindling afterglow,
If, to familiar hearth there cling
The virgin freshness of the spring,
And April’s music still be heard
In wooing voice and winning word.
If when autumnal shadows streak
The furrowed brow, the wrinkled cheek,
Devotion deepening to the close,
Like fruit that ripens tenderer grows;
If, though the leaves of youth and hope
Lie thick on the life’s declining slope,
The fond heart, faithful to the last,
Lingers in love drifts of the past;
If with the gravely shortening days
Faith trims the lamp, faith feeds the blaze,
And reverence, robed in wintry white,
Sheds fragrance like a summer night,
Then love can last!
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