Week 38—Saturday 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24
1 Thessalonians 5:23-24
“HE WOULD GO ON GIVING HIS MESSAGE”
I mentioned the Chinese cook who brought in a cake to celebrate my twenty-fifth anniversary as a missionary with the quotation from the classics on it: “Through the ages one word,” meaning that through the ages I had one Word, one message—Jesus. The cook was profoundly right. But if your message is a philosophy, a moralism, you cannot have “one word,” you have to have many words and different words or else your messages become stale. Hence the search, the frantic search for something new. And this search ends in frustration for every emphasis exhausts itself sooner or later—every emphasis except one—Jesus.
Someone spoke in the presence of an Indian governor about an honor that might be conferred on “Brother Stanley.” The governor replied, “It would be nice, of course, but if it didn’t come it would make no difference—he would go on giving his message.” Quite true. I’m not “an angry man,” as some writers style themselves. But I am “an excited man,” an excitement that issues in calmness, an excitement that becomes tranquility, an excitement that sets me on fire, but, like Moses’ burning bush, I’m never consumed. I’ve never taken a headache tablet, nor a tranquilizer. I said to a government official, an income tax officer, “What is your biggest headache?” He replied, “I have no headaches, I belong to Jesus.” A pastor told this story, “When I came to the Camp Sierra Ashram I had sinus so bad I had to have six handkerchiefs a day. But when I surrendered to Jesus Christ, my sinus trouble was gone. Now I have one handkerchief a day—to wipe perspiration here in Honolulu.” An income tax man, efficient, but with no headaches; a pastor in Honolulu with only one handkerchief. Small things? Yes, but exciting, for Jesus Christ is performing miracles, big and little, all up and down the line, for big people, little people, for all people. No wonder through the ages I have one word, and I hope my last gasp will be, “I commend my Savior to you.”
O Jesus, my Lord, I can sing of nothing but of you. And when I sing of you the music of the spheres joins my song and sings with me. For in you I’ve caught the joy of Life, the power to live and the Eternal in the now. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I shall speak many words, but underlying them will be “one Word.”