A Message from a Missionary.
The other morning hearing strange cries of joy I went outside the house to see the cause. There I found our native man also deeply interested. " What is the matter? " I asked. He replied " You see that line of men going down the hill side." " Yes " I said. " What are they doing? " " Well " he said, " can you see another group of men at the bottom of the hill? They are waiting for help. They are bringing up the mill-stones for the olive-press and have called for help. Their cries have been heard and the line of men you see are going to their assistance." " But " I said, " who are making the shouts of joy? " " Ah! " he replied, " look up, there you will see at the top of the hill, at the entrance to the village, the wives of those men who have gone down to help. They are encouraging their husbands as the work is heavy and they are not able to help by lifting."
I watched the scene for a little while, and it was most interesting to see how each man took his turn whilst the women cheered. At last they all arrived at their destination and what a shout of joy! The sounds echoed from hill to hill. The men and the women all rejoiced together. Those whose burden had been so faithfully carried for them right to the journey's end and those who had done their part by a cry of encouragement.
What a lesson for the christian! Do we know the joy of bearing the burden of another? And if we are not able to take the burden, do we know what it is to share by encouraging? Are we doing what we can?
Oh! how many ways we can help another in trouble or in difficulty or sorrow by a smile, a helpful word or a silent prayer. We cannot always help a lonely one for example, but we can write a cheerful letter to cheer him in his loneliness. We cannot take the sickness away from some who are sick, but we can perhaps visit them and sing a hymn or pray with them, or take a book for them to read or a few flowers to help them to forget their pain and suffering.
Do you know the joy of helping those who are seeking to win souls for Christ? Sometimes the burden is too great for the missionary and he cries out for help. " Come over and help us." Do you help to the best of your ability?
Perhaps, like those Kabyle women we are not strong enough to help, but oh, we can pray, and by so doing we are doing our bit in helping to bear the burden to win those dark souls for Christ. And then what will be the result? All will rejoice together in that day when the Lord comes to make up " His jewels," those who have been won for Him.
I learned also from our man that it was part of the native law to help to carry those heavy mill-stones. What are we told to do? " Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." Gal. 6. 2.
Things concerning Himself.
We can well understand the greater ease with which we could receive a person of distinction at our house, than go and visit him at his. But a visit from him would be the surest way of preparing us to pay a visit to him, and see him in those conditions and circumstances which are properly his, and superior to ours.
After this manner is it between the Lord and us. Who can tell it in its blessedness! He has been here, in the midst of our circumstances, as the Son of man Who came eating and drinking, showing Himself in the gracious freedom of one that would gain our confidence. He walked and talked with us as a man would with his friend. He knew us face to face. He was in out house.
And, after He rose, He returned to us, if not to our house, to our world-for the resurrection-scenes were all laid here. He was then on His way to His own place; but again He tarried in ours, that the links between us might be strengthened. For then, after He had risen, He was the same to us as He had been before. Change of condition had no effect upon Him blessed to tell it. Kindred instances of grace and character, before He suffered and after He rose, show us this abundantly. Late events had put the Lord and His disciples at a greater distance than companions had ever known. They had betrayed their unfaithful hearts, forsaking Him, and fleeing in the hour of His weakness and danger; while He, for their sake, had gone through death, tasting the judgment of God upon sin. And they were still poor Galileans, and He was glorified with all power in heaven and on earth. But all this wrought no change in Him. " Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature," as an apostle says, could do that. He returns to them the very Jesus they had known before. He showed them His hands and -His side, that they might know that it was He Himself. Yea, we may add, He showed them His heart, and His thoughts, and His ways; His sympathies, and considerateness, and all His affections; that in another sense they might know that it was He Himself.
I would not stop to offer the evidence of this from the Evangelists; it so abounds, addressing us on every occasion in which we see the Lord in resurrection, if we do but duly heed it. But if I might for a moment pass the bounds of the Evangelists, and look at the ascended Jesus in the Book of Acts, there we find the same identity. Jesus here in ministry, Jesus in resurrection, Jesus in heaven, is the same Jesus. For from the heavens He seems to delight in knowing Himself by the name that He had acquired among us and for us, the name which makes Him ours by the bond of a common nature, and by the bond of accomplished grace and salvation. " I am Jesus," was His answer as from the highest place in heaven, when Saul, on the road to Damascus, demanded of Him, " Who art Thou, Lord? "
What shall we say, beloved, of the condescendings, the faithfulness, the greatness, the simplicity, the glory and the grace together, that form and mark His path before us! We know what He is this moment, and what He will be forever, from what He has already been, as we see Him in the four Gospels. And we may pass into His world in all ease and naturalness, when we think of this.
" There no stranger-God shall meet thee
Stranger thou in courts above."
He is " the Same yesterday, and to-day, and forever," in His own proper glory. With Him " is no variableness, neither shadow of turning," according to His essential, divine nature, and so in His knowledge of us, His relationship to us, His affections for us, and His way with us.