Soon after email was invented a friend sent this story to me:
Abraham Lincoln often slipped out of the White House on Wednesday evenings to listen to the sermons of Dr. Phineas Gurley at a local Presbyterian Church. Lincoln generally preferred to come and go unnoticed, so when Dr. Gurley knew the president was coming, he left his study door open. On one of those occasions, the president quietly entered through a side door of the church, took his seat in the minister’s study, located just off the sanctuary, and propped the door open just wide enough to hear the preacher.
During the walk home one Wednesday evening, an aide asked Mr. Lincoln his appraisal of the sermon. The president thoughtfully replied, “The content was excellent…he delivered with eloquence…he had put work into the message…”
“Then you thought it was an excellent sermon?” questioned the aide.
“No,” Lincoln answered.
“But you said that the content was excellent, it was delivered with eloquence and it showed much work,” the aide pressed.
“That’s true,” Lincoln said. “But Dr. Gurley forgot the most important ingredient. He forgot to ask us to do something great.”
“He forgot to ask us to do something great.”
So much of our lives are built on the average and the every day and the need for daily faithfulness in the routine–even in the small and the mundane–and this is very good. It is essential. But it is also true that every life should strive for a contribution to some great cause, to do something noble, to invest deeply in something bigger than self-preservation and self-pampering.
A completely self-absorbed life is the smallest life in the world. A deeply self-giving life is the largest life in the world–not usually the largest in terms of recognition but certainly the largest in terms of fulfillment and meaning and noble accomplishment.
“Af anyone wants to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.” Jesus in Mark 9:35
“For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” Jesus in Matthew 16:25
“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” Jesus in Mark 10:45
Jesus, unlike Dr. Phineas Gurley on the particular Wednesday evening, calls us to something great. He calls us to sell out our lives for the Person of God and the reputation of God and the work of God and the good of others. He calls us to noble living and Bible causes. He calls us to deep dedication to the Kingdom.
Life is so much more exciting when we follow Jesus’ call to “do something great.”
Let me ask you to do something great in the next ten days. Here it is: “Ask God to show you a noble cause that is far greater than self-pampering. Ask Him to plant in your heart something great that is far above even self-preservation–more important than saving you life. Ask God for the gift of a great dream and for the joy that goes with it.”
When He shows you, go after it! That would be great!
RE: “A completely self-absorbed life is the smallest life in the world. A deeply self-giving life is the largest life in the world–not usually the largest in terms of recognition but certainly the largest in terms of fulfillment and meaning and noble accomplishment.”
C.S Lewis
“If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world [nowadays] that they have become so ineffective in this.”