Quiet Talks on ServiceGordon, S. D. (Samuel Dickey)
Religion
Quiet Talks on Service
Gordon, S. D. (Samuel Dickey)
Christian life
Then Jesus, with a sweep, gathers up all the results in a single sentence,
"Ye shall find rest unto your souls." Some one may be thinking, "I do not
feel the need of rest or peace so much. I am hungry for power." Will you
please notice that Jesus is going to the very root of the thing here.
There must be peace before there can be power. _You_ shall find peace.
_Others_ shall find power. You will be conscious of the sweet sense of
peace within. Others will be conscious of the fragrant power breathing out
of your life, and service, and your very person.
These things, peace and power, are the same. They are different movements
of the same river of God. The presence of God in fine harmony with you,
that it is that brings the sweet peace. And that too it is that brings the
gracious power into the life. The inward flow of the river is peace. The
outward flow of the same stream is power. There cannot be power save as
there is peace. There is nothing that hinders and holds back power as does
friction. That is true in mechanics: a bit of friction grit between the
wheels will check the full working of the machinery. A small nut fallen
down out of place will completely stop the machine and bring all of its
power to a standstill.
This is _heart_ rest. The heart is the center, the citadel of the life.
When the heart rests all is at rest. If the citadel can be captured the
outworks are included. It is a _found_ rest. It comes quietly stealing its
soft way in as you go about your regular round of life. Just where you
are, in the thick of the old circumstances and conditions, there comes
breathing gently into your very being the great fragrant peace of God. You
find it coming in. There is all the zest of finding.
It is rest _in service_. To many folks those two words "yoke" and "rest"
have seemed to jar, as though they did not get along well together. But
they do. The jarring is not in them but in our misunderstanding of them. A
yoke, we have thought, means work. Rest means quitting work; no more need
of work. But that is a bit of the hurt of sin that gets so many things
wrong end to.
"Rest is not quitting
The busy career;
Rest is the fitting
Of self to its sphere."[8]
True rest is in the unhurried rhythm of action. Have you thought of when
your heart rests? It does not stop, of course, while life lasts. But it
rests. It rests between beats. A beat and a rest. A throb of power and a
moment of perfect rest. A mighty motion that sends the warm red life
through all the intricate machinery of the body; then quiet composed rest.
The secret of the immeasurable power of this organ we call the heart lies
just here. There is enough power in a normal human heart to batter down
Bunker Hill Monument if it could be centered upon it. The secret of that
power is in the rhythm of action that combines motion with rest. We call
rhythm of color, beauty. Rhythm of sound is music. Rhythm of action is
power.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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