Helping Others
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Dear friend,
Your work seems to have been increasing since I saw you. I suppose there is some compensation in the extra money it brings in, especially as you told me you were living on a pretty close margin with your present income. I wish there were some way to make your regular income larger, so that you would have no such anxiety about making ends meet. I trust that something better will come by and by — that you will be able to live without so much care. You speak about some people being hard to help. I suppose this comes from two things — first, because life yields very slowly to deep and permanent impressions, especially good and uplifting impressions; secondly, because we cannot always tell when we are helping people the most, and in the best way.
There is no doubt that influences toward evil are much more apt to make instant impression, than influences toward good. There certainly is something in our nature which causes us to gravitate naturally downward, toward things that are less beautiful. I remember a prayer of Fenelon's: "Lord, take me — for I cannot give myself to you. And when you have me — keep me, for I cannot keep myself. And save me in spite of myself, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen." I suppose this prayer voices the experience of almost anyone who is sincere and thoughtful and truly striving toward the best things.
We all understand this inward tendency toward things which are not beautiful and good. The way toward Heaven is always upward — and takes climbing. You remember that a ladder was Jacob's vision of life. What we find to be true in ourselves in our efforts to reach better things — is also true of others whom we desire to help. There is something in them, too, as well as in us, which resists good impressions. Therefore, it is hard for us to do them good in moral and spiritual ways.
On the other hand, we cannot tell really when we are doing good, or making impressions. Oft-times we think we are not affecting the people at all by what we say or do — while really we are putting into their hearts impulses, inspirations, which will ultimately come to full fruit-age in blessing and good. I think that nothing good is ever really lost. The good words wespeak and the good things we do as we go along through life, may seem to have no effect; but the good seed is not lost, even though it does not grow in the hearts in which we seek to plant it. You know what Charles Kingsley says about the seed that falls by the wayside and is picked up by the birds — that, though the birds get it, yet the birds are fed. That is, if your efforts do not do just that which you hoped they would do, help the person you want to help — yet the good, itself, is not lost — but touches some other person's life with benediction and beauty.
The last verse of the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians has always been a wonderful comfort to me — "Your labour is not in vain in the Lord." Paul had spoken, throughout the chapter, of resurrection and the immortal life and this thought in the close of the wonderful passage, suggests to us that everything we do lays hold upon infinity and eternity. "Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord — knowing that your labour is not in vain in the Lord." It will go on forever. Even if the good effort seems to fail today and tomorrow, and unto the end of our life — still it has eternity to work in, and sometime, somewhere, in some way, it will be a blessing.
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