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Christ Identifies With the Poor and Suffering
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poverty that narrows life, and are often tempted to become envious
and full of evil surmisings.
How to Ignore Christ
But Christ sees it all, and He says, It was I who was hungry and
thirsty. It was I who was a stranger. While you were feasting at your
bountifully spread table, I was famishing in the hovel. While you
were at ease in your luxurious home, I had nowhere to lay My head.
While you pursued your pleasures, I languished in prison. When
you doled out the pittance of bread to the starving poor, when you
gave those flimsy garments to shield them from the biting frost, did
you remember that you were giving them to the Lord of glory? All
the days of your life I was near you in the person of these afflicted
ones, but you did not seek Me. You would not enter into fellowship
with Me. I know you not.
Many visit the scenes of Christ’s life on earth, to look on the
lake beside which He loved to teach, and the hills and valleys on
which His eyes rested. But we need not go to Nazareth or to Bethany
in order to walk in the steps of Jesus. We shall find His footprints
beside the sickbed, in hovels of poverty, in every place where there
are human hearts in need of consolation.
All may find something to do. Millions of human souls bound in
ignorance and sin have never so much as heard of Christ’s love for
them. Christ’s rule of life, by which every one of us must stand or
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fall in the judgment, is, “Whatsoever ye would that men should do
to you, do ye even so to them.”
Matthew 7:12
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The Saviour has given His life to establish a church capable of
caring for tempted souls. Believers may be poor, uneducated, and
unknown, yet in Christ they may do a work in the neighborhood and
even in “the regions beyond” whose results shall be as far-reaching
as eternity. Because this work is neglected, many young disciples
never advance beyond the mere alphabet of Christian experience.
The restless energy that is so often a source of danger might be
directed into streams of blessing. Self would be forgotten in earnest
work to do others good. Those who minister to others will not be
longing for exciting amusements, or for some change in their lives.
The great topic of interest will be how to save souls ready to perish.