Blessedness of Eternal Service
How much we have to thank our Saviour for, in what he told us about our future life! We often wonder that he did not say more. But the words, "If it were not so, I would have told you," are a sufficient answer to any feeling of insufficiency. Whenever our minds range up and down the words, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant-enter thou into the joy of thy Lord," we may find comfort of the most substantial order. In the words, "Well done, good and faithful servant" we discover that character and capacity—what we are and what we can do— are coins that ring true on both counters, are characteristics of the eternal life, which is ours to live in all the worlds. Let busy men and women who sometimes recoil from those descriptions of heaven in books and poems and sermons that dwell too exclusively on psalms and harps and music and rest and peace, rejoice that the teachings of Jesus are so full of service and activity.
"My Father worketh hitherto, and I work," is the enfranchisement and ennoblement of labor. How often from the lips of Jesus fall the words,
"husbandman," "vineyard," "laborer," "master," "servant," "ruler," "talents," " pounds," "steward," "interest,"
"wages"! However lonely and obscure and seemingly unimportant our life-work may be, let us remember that it is only our novitiate, our apprenticeship, and that to be good and faithful in a few things, even in that which is least, —is to make as good a beginning as God asks of any one, and will be as certain of recognition in the day of account as though we were kings or princes.
Maltbie D. Babcock 1858~1901 (excerpt from his book titled Thoughts For Every-Day Living)
