Jesus said to His disciples: And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward. No offering of thanks for salvation is in vain. It brings bliss. It will get its reward—from the greatest offer of thanks which we can afford to give, down to the smallest—a kind word, a friendly clasping of hands, a cup of cold water. Nothing of all this shall be in vain. But he who lives outside himself, absorbed by the cravings for ever more riches, lives in vain even though he may become a millionaire.
Are you not in need of having written above all of your life and all your doings that one great word, Forgiven! And are you not in need of being assured that you have not lived in vain? You may not have been able to bring the magnificent sacrifices which the world lauds in the newspaper columns, and you may easily be led into the belief that you have lived in vain; but then you shall know that the Lord who is the King of Kings and the Judge of all and everything, will reward also that which looks insignificant and small in the eyes of the world. Nothing of that which you do as His disciple, is done in vain.
Above the life of the children of the world one might place the inscription: Nothing forgiven—everything in vain! Above the lives of Christians: Everything forgiven—nothing in vain.
Isn't that so, then: Christians have glorious days!
What terms do you choose?
3. During the Following Days
It was a day of joy to Zacchæus when Jesus entered his house. But how were the following days?
Undoubtedly there were days when the old greediness tempted him again. When the people of Israel in a miraculous way had been helped across the Red Sea, they were saved from the armed hosts of the Egyptians, but not from their plagues. The Egyptian soldiers had been drowned in the waves of the Red Sea, but the Egyptian temptations accompanied Israel across the sea and made the wanderings in the desert beset with hardships and difficulties. Indeed, they often, in their worldly hearts, reverted to the thought: Would it not, after all, have been better to return and to partake of the plentiful provisions of Egypt than to fight their way laboriously onward to the promised land?
Likewise the tempter undoubtedly has often whispered to Zacchæus: After all, wouldn't it have been wiser to gather money than to give it away as an offering in return for salvation? But then Zacchæus in his mind reverted to that great day when Jesus for the first time was a guest in his house, and his thoughts have lived that day over and over again—No, never was I as happy as on the day when I gave half of my goods to the poor, and never have I been able to make as many people happy as on that day. The offering had not been given in vain. So the old greediness had to yield to the benevolent impulse.