Week 39—Saturday 2 Corinthians 10:10; 11:6
Week 39—SATURDAY
A BOOTBLACK: “I LOVE TO WORK
FOR JESUS—I DO IT FOR HIM”
We come to our closing day this week on seeing the Universal in the particular. Jesus was the Universal Particular, the Absolute Concrete. And we see this Universal Absolute through the Particular.
For instance, we talking high-sounding language about bridging the chasms of hate between nations and making a brotherhood, but this illustration lingers in my mind after the brotherhood phrases die out. In 1949, on my first of six visits to Hiroshima, Japan, where the first atomic bomb fell, I stayed in a Quonset hut as the guest of two women. One, an American woman who had lost her husband in Okinawa, of course, by Japanese bullets. The other was a Japanese woman who had lost her doctor husband and her whole family when the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima, dropped by Americans. These two Christian women lived together as sisters in a deep fellowship. They were the word of healing fellowship made flesh. And it was an unforgettable experience to be in that home.
A Hindu doctor was opposed to Christianity. He went to London and there, having a shoeshine, he noted that the boy did it so neatly and cheerfully and sang while he did it. The Hindu asked him, why? And the boy replied, “I am a Christian. I love to work for Jesus—I do it for him.” All the prejudice against Christianity faded out of the doctor’s heart. He saw it in the bright face of the bootblack—the Word had become flesh.
One of my most luminous moments in India was this one: [I previously mentioned the fact that we give the few servants at the Ashram a holiday once a week and we volunteer to take their jobs, including the sweepers’ job, cleaning the latrines by hand.] When we began it, of course, as the head of the Ashram I would be expected to volunteer and did. When the sweeper came back at eventide, he stood before my window with folded hands and his face wreathed in smiles but without a word. I saw the whole social revolution in that man’s face. He said nothing—and everything!
O Lord Jesus, give me the passion of that bootblack who used his little and made it into the much. I have much more than he had, but am I using my much the way he used his little? Forgive me for my comparative lukewarmness. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Whether I have little or much is not the chief concern, but who has my little or my much.