5. Forget Yourself in Serving Others
Forget Yourself in Serving Others
GOD GIVES LOVE; it isn’t in us to love. I don’t naturally love people I don’t know (and I don’t naturally love all the people I do know!). Love is of God and from God, and he pours it into our hearts if we let him.
STAND BY YOUR FELLOWSHIP and family, and forget yourself in serving others. That is the way of joy.
SOME OF YOU WHO ARE LONGING to live this life still hesitate. There is no life in all the world so joyful. It has pain in it, too, but looking back I can tell you truly, there is far more joy than pain. Do not hesitate. Give yourselves wholly to your Lord to be prepared for whatever he has chosen for you to do.
BEFORE THE CHILDREN CAME, we were continually camping in tents, mud huts, or tumbledown old bungalows, and we never stopped to grow even a flower; but after they came, we had to make a home for them, so things were different. And because we know that beautiful things are dear to God (look deep into beauty and you see him there), and that ugly, vulgar, coarse things are a jar, like a false note in music, we chose, when we had the choice, the beautiful, not the ugly. Someone (the angels perhaps) had planted trees up and down the field for us. We cherished those trees. And flowers began to grow where only scrub had been, and gradually the place became sweet and green, almost as though it offered coolness. And the bare, red blot on the bare, hot plain changed to something pleasant to the eye and beloved, at least to ourselves.
THE ROOMS ARE INDIAN, unfurnished save for cupboards, brass vessels and, according to the nice upper-class habit of the South, grass mats for beds; and the red-tiled floors are kept shiny by constant washing. Later on we found shells on the beach at Cape Comorin and water-worn wood like carved work by the river in the forest; and the children learned to dress their rooms with this inexpensive loveliness.
WHEN WE WERE AN ITINERATING BAND, we had many offers from Christian girls and women to join us, as many in one month as we now have in five years. Sometimes it has seemed to us that we were set to learn and to teach a new and difficult lesson, the sacredness of the commonplace. Day by day we learn to rub out a little more of the clear chalked line that someone has ruled on life’s blackboard; the secular and the spiritual may not be divided now. The enlightening of a dark soul or the lighting of a kitchen fire, it matters not which it is, if only we are obedient to the heavenly vision, and work with a pure intention to the glory of our God.
WE HAVE FOUND IT POSSIBLE to be directed as a company so that we can move together in a harmony of spirit that is restful and very sure. A company has to wait longer than one or two might have to do, but if all be set on doing their Lord’s will and be truly one in loyalty and the New Testament kind of affection that makes each one feel safe with each other one, if all flow together to the goodness of the Lord, unanimity is certain…. And we have always found that before the ultimate word must be spoken, divergent thoughts have vanished, as by some peaceful magic. The interval is sure to be perplexed by a temptation to the futile fuss of talk. Recognize this for what it is, the influence of the adversary (for hurry of spirit confuses), and before long the same quiet word will come to all.
THE ACCALS, without whom this work in all its various branches could not be undertaken, are a band of Indian sisters (the word accal means older sister) who live for the service of the children. First among the Accals is Ponnammal (Golden). With the quick affection of the East the children find another word for gold and call her doubly Golden Sister….
Ponnammal’s work lies chiefly among the convert-nurses and the babies. She has charge of the nurseries and of the food arrangements, so intricate and difficult to the mere lay mind; she trains her workers to thoroughness and earnestness, and by force of example seems to create an atmosphere of cheerful unselfishness that is very inspiring. How often we have sent a young convert, tempted to self-centeredness and depression, to Ponnammal, and seen her return to her ordinary work braced and bright and sensible. We are all faulty and weak at times, and every nursery, like every life, has its occasional lapses; but on the whole it is not too much to say that the nurseries are happy places, and Ponnammal’s influence goes through them all like a fresh wind. And this in spite of very poor health. For Ponnammal, who was the leader of our itinerating band, broke down hopelessly, and thought her use in life had passed – till the babies came and brought her back to activity again. And the joy of the Lord, we have often proved, is strength for body as well as soul….
Ponnammal lost all her little fortune by joining us. She could, perhaps, have recovered it by going to law, but she did not feel it right to do so, and she suffered herself to be defrauded. “How could I teach others to be unworldly if I myself did what to them would appear worldly-minded?” That was all she ever said by way of explanation.
SELLAMUTTU, WHO COMES NEXT to Ponnammal, is the “Pearl” of previous records, and she has been a pearl to us through all our years together. She is special Accal to the household of children above the baby-age – a healthy, high-spirited crowd of most diverse dispositions; and she is loved by one and all with a love which is tempered with great respect, for she is “all pure justice,” as a little girl remarked feelingly not long ago, after being rather sharply reproved for exceeding naughtiness: “within my heart wrath burned like a fire; but my mouth could not open to reply, for inside me a voice said, ‘It is true, entirely true; Accal is perfectly just.’”
NO MONEY WOULD HAVE DRAWN these workers to us. Work which has no clear ending, but drifts on into the night if babies are young or troublesome – such work makes demands upon devotion and practical unselfishness which appeal to none but those who are prepared to love with the tireless love of the mother….
Yet we find that the work, though so demanding, is full of compensations. The convert in her loneliness is welcomed into a family where little children need her and will soon love her dearly. The uncomforted places in her heart become healed, for the touch of a little child is very healing. If she is willing to forget herself and live for that little child, something new springs up within her; she does not understand it, but those who watch her know that all is well. Sometimes long afterward she reads her own heart’s story and opens it to us. “I was torn with longing for my home. I dreamed night after night about it, and I used to waken just wild to run back. And yet I knew if I had, it would have been destruction to my soul. And then the baby came, and you put her into my arms, and she grew into my heart, and she took away all that feeling, till I forgot I ever had it.” This was the story of one, a young wife, for whom the natural joys of home can never be.
But if there is selfishness or slackness or a weak desire to drift along in easiness, taking all and giving nothing, things are otherwise. For such the nurseries hold nothing but noise and interruptions. We ask to be spared from such as these. Or if they come, may they be inspired by the constraining love of Christ and “The Glory of the Usual.”
TO BELONG to the Sisters of the Common Life will certainly bring the devil’s fire upon us…. When a soul sets out to find God, it does not know whither it will come, and by what path it will be led; but those who catch the vision are ready to follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth…. As Sisters of the Common Life we are trusted to be very careful about our inner discipline, and continually to expose every part of our inward life to the searching light of God….
We are trusted to spread the spirit of love. Tenderness in judgment, the habit of thinking the best of one another, unwillingness to believe evil, grief if we are forced to do so, eagerness to believe good, joy over one recovered from any slip or fall, unselfish gladness in another’s joys, sorrow in another’s sorrow, readiness to do anything to help another entirely irrespective of self – all this and much more is included in that wonderful word love.
If love weakens among us, if it ever becomes possible to tolerate the least shadow of an unloving thought, our fellowship will begin to perish. Unlove is deadly. It is a cancer. It may kill slowly but it always kills in the end. Let us fear it, fear to give room to it as we should fear to nurse a cobra. It is deadlier than any cobra. And just as one minute drop of the almost invisible cobra venom spreads swiftly all over the body of one into whom it has been injected, so one drop of the gall of unlove in my heart or yours, however unseen, has a terrible power of spreading all through our family, for we are one body – we are parts of one another. If one member suffers loss, all suffer loss. Not one of us liveth to herself.
We owe it to the younger ones to teach them the truth that united prayer is impossible unless there be loyal love. If unlove be discovered anywhere, stop everything and put it right, if possible at once.
O MY CHILDREN, if only you would make up your minds never to doubt the love of another sister or brother in Christ, but always to think the best and never admit an unkind thought in your heart, how happy, how heavenly, life would be.
I REMEMBER ONCE weeks of unhappiness because a certain curry was badly cooked – the cause could have been discovered in five minutes if only there had been loving frankness, and speaking to instead of speaking of the one who made that curry.
I CANNOT REST because of the distress that comes to me as I think of a misunderstanding that need never have been between two of you who love the Lord Jesus and are wholly given to his service….
Often these misunderstandings are about the merest trifles. You let them grow and grow till your whole day is shadowed. This delights the devil, but it terribly injures your own soul, and it sorely grieves the spirit of love. Also, and this is serious, while you are yielding to such feelings you are unconsciously sowing seeds of unlove and distrust in other hearts – in the children’s hearts. These seeds will spring to life and grow up to your sorrow one day.
Why don’t you keep the Law of the Family and go straight to the one who has (you think) done something wrong? You can’t, do you say? You can. Love will find a way.
SO WE ALWAYS CAME TO THIS: Go on loving: “By the words of thy lips have I guarded me from hard ways” (the Septuagint rendering of Ps. 77:4). Go on praying: Pray for them that despitefully use you. (Our Lord does not say, “Wait till they are sorry for treating you so.”) …
Be careful also of your after-thinking as well as of your after-talking about any who have misjudged you. “The hill-man thinks upon the beauty of his hills; the farmer thinks upon his fields that have yielded him rich crops; the good think on the boons bestowed by worthy men; the base man’s thoughts are fixed on the abuse he has received,” is another old Tamil saying. Do not feed unloving thoughts. Remember His word, “I forgave thee all that debt.”
THIS “I” THAT IS MYSELF can disturb our very holiest things. The passionate longing (for it is indeed a passion and a pain) to be the one to rise and serve is the last thing to die in the heart that loves its fellows and finds its joy in serving them, just as the last prayer we drop is the prayer that we (with an emphasis on the we) may be used.
Is this a hard saying? But why? The pen on the desk is kept clean and filled with ink. The pencil is kept pointed. Both are ready, both are at hand; sometimes one is used, sometimes the other; if only the work be done, what does it matter which does it? There can be a subtle selfishness, a kind of covetousness which is idolatry (of self) in the perpetual cry, “Use me”.
HAVE YOU EVER THOUGHT how infectious fear can be? It spreads from one to another more quickly and certainly than any of the fevers we know so well. So, for the sake of others, let us refuse the spirit of fear which God never gives us (if he does not, who does?), and let us open our hearts wide to the spirit “of power and love and discipline” (2 Tim. 1:7). We can do this if we will.
Thank God, courage is as infectious as discouragement. Have you not often felt the cheer and strength that seem to flow from one whose mind is stayed on God? I have.
And I have been thinking of another, a greater, reason for refusing the spirit of fear. When we are downhearted, or fearful, or weak, we are saying to everybody, by looks and by deeds if not by words, “After all, our Lord is not to be absolutely trusted.” Somewhere near us, though we do not see them, are others, the good angels and the spirits of evil. To them, too, when we yield to fear, we say the same dishonoring thing. So for the greater glory of our glorious Savior who has never once failed us, and never will fail us, who has loved and led and guarded us all these years, let us look to him now and pray from the ground of our heart, “Lord, give us valor.”
WHEN YOU ARE FEELING DOWNHEARTED, go and do something for others. If you do that, and go on doing it, you will come to the place where Habakkuk was when he wrote his glorious Yet. “Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labor of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: Yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will joy in the God of my salvation” (Hab. 3:17–18).
Tink of the grit of that man long ago. He did not wail about feelings. And his God is your God. He can make even you a Habakkuk.
I WONDER IF YOU FEEL AS I DO about the heavenliness of song. I believe truly that Satan cannot endure it, and so slips out of the room – more or less! – when there is true song.
THE REASON WHY SINGING is such a splendid shield against the fiery darts of the devil is that it greatly helps us to forget him, and he cannot endure being forgotten. He likes us to be occupied with him, with what he is doing (our temptations), with his victories (our falls), with anything but our glorious Lord. So sing. Never be afraid of singing too much.
IT MATTERS A GOOD DEAL that your book-food should be strong meat. We are what we think about. Think about trivial things or weak things and somehow one loses fiber and becomes flabby in spirit.
CAN WE EVER THANK GOD ENOUGH for the spirit of happiness? … There is something in the continuance of happiness in untoward circumstances that is like the power of rejuvenescence in the rotifer. This little creature, which we find sometimes by scores in a drop of water, is a thing so delicate that a slip of the cover-glass on the slide will destroy the pinpoint of life in its crystal vase. And yet, when the pond dries up, it can gather itself into a ball within which are the forces of life. Then after being blown about by the wind perhaps for years, in a state of utter dustiness, when the rotifer finds itself in its own element the ball will revive, and put forth foot and head and silver wheel, and be as it was before, a minute marvel of activity and apparent enjoyment. The spirit of happiness is sheer miracle.
WHAT A JOYFUL LIFE OURS IS, continually proving God’s tenderness in the very little things. There is nothing too small for him to help.
SIMPLE, EFFORTLESS INTIMACY, that closeness of touch which is friendship indeed, is surely possible. But rather we would put it otherwise, and say that without it service together, of the only sort we would care to know, is perfectly impossible.
In our work all along we have had this joy to the full. God in his goodness gave us from the first those who responded at once to the confidence we offered them. In India the ideal of a consecrated life is a life with no reserves – which seeks for nothing, understands nothing, cares for nothing but to be poured forth upon the sacrifice and service…. The spring of heart to heart that we call affinity, the knitting no hand can ever afterward unravel – these experiences have been granted to us all through our work together, and we thank God for it.
I HAVE BEEN THINKING THIS – don’t get too heavy in talk and prayer. Earnestness does not necessarily mean heaviness. It is the joy of the Lord that is strength.
I PRAY FOR YOU ALL, for each one of you as if there were no other. Never feel lost in a crowd. It is not so. Each one of you is precious.