He Calls Us With A Mission
After Jesus had spent all the night praying to the Heavenly Father, He choses his twelve apostles. He then went down with them to a piece of level group where there was a gathering of disciples together a great crowd of people from all parts of Israel.
He calls us too with a mission to be his disciples. He wants no payment under his tutelage or preparation. He seeks no recommendation from our virtuous emotions. If you have no good feelings, if you be but willing, you are invited; therefore come! You have no belief and no repentance,—come to him, and he will give them to you. Come just as you are, and take “Freely,” without money and without price the gift of true discipleship.
He freely gives himself to needy ones. The drinking fountains at the corners of our streets are valuable institutions; and we can hardly imagine any one so foolish as to feel for his purse, when he stands before one of them, and to cry, “I cannot drink because I have not twenty naira baits in my pocket.” However poor the man is, there is the fountain, and just as he is he may drink of it. Thirsty passengers, as they go by, whether they are dressed in fustian or in broadcloth, do not look for any warrant for drinking; its being there is their warrant for taking its water freely.
The liberality of some good friends has put the refreshing crystal there and we take it, and ask no questions. Perhaps the only persons who need go thirsty where there is a drinking fountain, are the fine ladies and gentlemen who are in their carriages. They are very thirsty, but cannot think of being so vulgar as to get out to drink. It would demean them, they think, to drink at a common drinking fountain: so they ride by with parched lips.
Oh, how many there are who are rich in their own good works and cannot therefore come to Christ! “I will not be saved,” they say, “in the same way as the harlot or the swearer.” What! Go to heaven in the same way as a chimney sweep. Is there no pathway to glory but the path which led the repentant thief there? I will not be saved that way. Such proud boasters must remain at their level without the living water; but, “Whosoever will, let him COME AND FOLLOW IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. Let him be rooted in Christ as Saint Paul tells us in today’s first reading; be built on him, held firm in faith and full of thanksgiving. Col 2:6. For in Christ you too will find all the fulfillment.
David knew much, but he felt his ignorance, and desired to be still in the Lord’s school: four times over in two verses he applies for a scholarship in the college of grace.
It would have been well for many professors and philosophers, if instead of following their own devices, and cutting out new paths of thought for themselves, they would enquire for the good old ways of God’s own truth, and beseech the Holy Spirit to give them sanctified understandings and teachable spirits and virtues.
Jesus is the Author and Perfecter of salvation to his people. Reader, is he the God of your salvation? Do you find in the Father’s election, in the Son’s atonement, and in the Spirit’s quickening, all the grounds of your eternal hopes?
If so, you may use this as an argument for obtaining further blessings; if the Lord has ordained to save you, surely he will not refuse to instruct you in his ways. It is a happy thing when we can address the Lord with the confidence which David here manifests, it gives us great power in prayer, and comfort in trial.
Patience therefore, is the fair handmaid and daughter of faith; we cheerfully wait when we are certain that we shall not wait in vain. It is our duty and our privilege to wait upon the Lord in service, in worship, in expectancy, in trust all the days of our life.
Our faith will be tried faith, and if it be of the true kind, it will bear continued trial without yielding. We shall not grow weary of waiting upon God in prayer if we remember how long and how graciously he once waited for us.
