Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. LukeMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. Luke
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Luke -- Commentaries
How strange that is, that just as a beam of light coming into a room
would enable us to see all the motes dancing up and down that lay in
its path, so the beam from Christ's life shoots athwart the society
of His age, and all those little insignificant people come for a
moment into the full lustre of the light. Years before and years
afterward they lived, and we do not know anything about them; but
for an instant they crossed the illuminated track and there they
blazed. How strange Pharisees, officials, and bookmen of all sorts
would have felt if anybody had said to them: 'Do you see that
handful of travel-stained Galileans there, those poor women you have
just passed by the way? Well, do you know that these three women's
names will never perish as long as the world lasts?' So we may learn
the eternity of work done for Him. Ah, a great deal of it may be
forgotten and unrecorded! How many deeds of faithful love and noble
devotion are all compressed into those words, 'which ministered unto
Him'! It is the old story of how life shrinks, and shrinks, and
shrinks in the record. How many acres of green forest ferns in the
long ago time went to make up a seam of coal as thick as a sixpence?
But still there is the record, compressed indeed, but existent.
And how many names may drop out and not be associated with the work
which they did? Do you not think that these anonymous 'many others
which ministered' were just as dear to Jesus Christ as Mary and
Joanna and Susannah? A great many people helped Him whose deeds are
related in the Gospel, but whose names are not recorded. But what
does it matter about that? With many 'others of my fellow-labourers
also,' says St. Paul; 'whose names'--well, I have forgotten them;
but that is of little consequence; they 'are in the Lamb's book of
life.' And so the work is eternal, and will last on in our blessed
consciousness and in His remembrance who will never forget any of
it, and we shall self-enfold the large results, even if the rays of
dying fame may fade.
And there is one other thought on this matter of the eternity of the
work on which I would just touch for an instant.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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