Daily Devotionals

Music For the Soul

Devotional: January 28th

UNCONSCIOUS POWER FOR SERVICE

We know not with what we must serve the Lord. - Exodus 10:26

The weakest and the lowest, the roughest and the hardest, the most selfishly-absorbed man and woman amongst us has lying in him and her dormant capacities for flaming up into such a splendor of devotion, and magnificence of heroic self-forgetfulness and self-sacrifice as is represented in many words of the Bible. A mother will do it for her child, and never think that she has done anything extraordinary; husbands will do such things for wives; wives for husbands; friends and lovers for one another. All who love the sweetness and power of the bond of affection know that there is nothing more gladsome than to fling one’s self away for the sake of those whom we love. And the capacity for such love and sacrifice lies in all of us; prosaic, commonplace people as we are, with no great field on which to work out our heroism’s, yet it is in us all to love and give ourselves away thus if once the heart be stirred. If once the capacity is roused to action, it will make a man blessed and dignified as nothing else will. The joy of unselfish love is the purest joy that man can taste; the joy of perfect self-sacrifice is the highest joy that humanity can possess, - and it lies open for us all.

And wherever, in some humble measure, these emotions of which I have been speaking are realized, there you get weakness springing up into strength, and the ignoble into loftiness. Astronomers tell us that, sometimes, a star that has shone inconspicuous, away down in their catalogs fifth or sixth magnitude, will all at once flame out, having kindled and caught fire somehow, and will blaze in the heavens, outshining Jupiter and Venus. And so some poor, vulgar, narrow nature, touched by this Promethean fire of pure love that leads to perfect sacrifice, will "flame in the forehead of the morning sky," an undying splendor, and a light for evermore. All have this capacity in them, and all are responsible for the use of it. What have you done with it? Is there any person or thing in this world that has ever been able to lift you up out of your miserable selves? Is there any magnet that has proved strong enough to raise you from the low levels along which your life creeps? Have you ever known the thrill of resolving to become the bond servant and the slave of some great cause not your own? Or are you, as so many are, like spiders living in the midst of your web, mainly intent upon what it can catch for you? Have you ever set a light to that inert mass of enthusiasm that lies in you? Have you ever woke up the sleeper? Learn the lesson that there is nothing that so ennobles and dignifies a common nature as enthusiasm for a great cause, self-sacrificing love for a worthy heart.