| The Every Day of Life |
Chapter 2 |
Page 5 |
What is the lesson? When three brave men brought to David, shut up in a cave, water from the well that was by the gate of Bethlehem, cutting through the lines of the Philistines to get it for him, he would not drink it, but poured it out unto the Lord. “Be it far from me, O Lord,” he said, “ that I should do this! Shall I drink the blood of the men that went in jeopardy of their lives?” Its cost made the water too sacred to be used even for the gratification of his own natural thirst. It could be fitly used in no way but as an offering to the Lord.
If that cup of water was so sacred because hands of love brought it through peril, what shall we say of the blessings of our lives, which have cost others so much? Are they not all sacred? This is one lesson. Nothing is common or unclean. Everything has been cleansed by its cost. How this thought transfigures all life, all our possessions and enjoyments!
Then a further lesson is that these sacred things must not be used for common ends, for any mere selfish gratification. We should consecrate them to God. But how can we do this? For one thing, we should never put anything of ours to any sinful or unholy use. We cherish heirlooms, mementos, and memorials of friends who are gone. We hold them as sacred as life itself. We would not for the world desecrate a keepsake. A poor woman told the other day, how her husband had taken her ring, her dead mother’s gift to her, and had pawned it to get a little money to buy drink. No wonder her heart was almost broken by his act. When we think of it, all the blessings of our lives are sacred memorials of love, because they represent the toil and sacrifice of those who have gone before us. To use even the commonest of them in any sinful way is to desecrate hallowed things.
Even to use our blessings solely for ourselves is also to dishonor them. David would not even quench his own sore thirst with the water, which had cost so much. It is sacrilege to use our good things for ourselves alone. We employ them worthily only when we share them with others. This is the true way of giving them to God. This is what he wants us to do with them. We lay them on his altar, but they are not burned up there, as were the ancient offerings. God gives them back to us, that we may take them, and with them bless other lives.
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