“And your lights burning.”
Be ready for the emergency. When the darkness falls, don’t have to hasten away to buy oil. Look after your resources, and be competent to meet the crisis when it comes. Let the light of conscience be burning with clear flame, like a brilliant lighthouse on a dangerous shore. Let the light of love be burning, like a lamp which sends its friendly, cheery beams to the pilgrims of the night. “Our sufficiency is of God,” and the oil of grace will keep the lights burning through the longest night.
OCTOBER The Twentieth
THE LORD AS THE SERVANT
“Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands,
and that He came forth from God, and goeth to God....”
—John xiii. 1-20.
ND how shall we expect the sentence to finish? What shall be the issue of so vast a consciousness? “He took a towel, and girded Himself ... and began to wash the disciples’ feet.”
So a mighty consciousness expresses itself in lowly service. In our ignorance we should have assumed that divinity would have moved only in planetary orbits, and would have overlooked the petty streets and ways of men. But here the Lord of Glory girds Himself with the apron of the slave, and almightiness addresses itself to menial service.