QUIET HOUR

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 11 July 1925, Page 7

QUIET HOUR

THE FOOT THAT STANDS. ••I went down to the potter's house; and, behold, he wrought a work on the wheels.” —Jer. xviii,3. This passage toll how a prophet watched a potter working with the clay on his wheel. He watched the shapeloss lump of clay spinning round, and under the potter's hand rising up into the shape of a cup. Suddenly it collapsed. The potter stopped his wheel, crushed the cup hack into a lump again and made out of it another \cssel. Then an idea came to him, a "word of the Lord,” lie says; and it wa s this, that what the potter did to the clay, God was doing to His people, making them over again after they had iaileu in His hand. That is how ‘‘the word of the Lord" came to people: not by a voice that all could hear but through the eyes that could seo and minds that could understand what they saw, and gather the gold of Hod's truth from crevices of common everyday things. That is how "words of Hod” .yti. come. Here is one that came the other day to a lady who, like the prophet Jeremiah, had gone down to the house of the potter. It was not in the East, where they sit at work, but in an English village. Hie potter stood at his work. and drove the wheel with his foot. When he had finished a work and was prepar. ing another, she said, "Your foot must get very tired driving the wheelf” "No,” he said, "it isn’t the foot that works that fis tired : it’s the foot that stands.”

That was "a word of the Lord” to that lady, and when i read it? it was a word of the Lord to me and 1 want to pass it on so that it may he a word of the Lord to you. It is a word that sings itself into a kind of lilt. Make it one of your songs: "It isn’t the foot that works that tiros; It’ s the foot that's standing still.” Here we are at the wheel of life, trying to make the clay of our own character into something that will hold and keep the joy and goodness of life. We have two sides to our nature, like the two feet of the potter —our body and soul. I suppose a sensible potter learns to work with, liis left foot as well as his .right, and gives them turn about at the treadle, s o that both grow strong together, and the strong foot is not held back and hindered by the weak. It’s no use being onesided. It’s no use having one leg like Samson’s, if the other i s a spindle-shank. It’s no use having one leg with a calf like the fatted calf, if the other is like one of Pharaoh’s lean kine. It’s no use being able on the one side to run like Eric Liddell, if the other side can hardly hobble. For the two sides have to go together: their pace will be the pace of the slower side, their strength the strength of the weaker. These things sound absurd: but they are just what is happening to many people in terms of their body and their soul.

One side is very busy: the other gets too little to do. We all have plenty to do on the one side, men at their work and business, housewives in their homes hoys and girls with lessons and,games and hobbies. But the other side the side of worship and prayer and serving Hod and reading Hi s word that side' is underworked. And because the soul is underworked, the soul is tired, and because the soul j s tired, the body tires too. The world is full of tired folk. They come to the end of the week, they tell you, tired out. too tired to go to church. The reason why they are so tired is not because they have overworked their body, it is because they are underworking their soul. It is tired because it has nothing to do. It’s left to loaf about the corners of •life, and loafing is more exhausting than any work can ever be.

The remedy for the boy or girl that i s tired after Saturday’s football or hockey is not to lie in bed on Sunday morning, but to get up and go to church and give their soul a chance. If you’re fagged with the week’s lessons, the remedy is not to stop thinking but think about something else. Ho to Sunday school or Bible class and let your mind think on the things of God Then: you will be refreshed for Monday. Tired bodies and worried, overworked minds wiil find their healing in worshipping and praising Hod. All life will gain 'strength, as the soul is strong, and it can’t be strong if it lie left standing idle. "It isn’t the foot that works that tires. It’s the foot that’s standing still.”

ST. PAUL'S HYMN OF LOVE. A PARAPHRASE. “If I have all the gifts of a revivalist and have not love, 1 am merely a braying trumpet, or the clapper all a bell. Though. I am a preacher and know all God's secrets, and all the Theology there is, and though I believe in God so much that 1 can remove mountains, but have not love, 1 do not count. Though X spend all my income on Philanthropy, though I am ready even for the stake, but have 'not love, there is nothing in it. Love does hot take offence, is always trying to do good turns to others. Love is not jealous, does not swagger does not stand on its dignity. Always behaves like a gentleman, never plays for it s own hand; does not get peevish; sees the best in others; never loses faith; never loses hope; always sees it through to the end. Love never lets you down. If it is sermons, they will he out of date; if it i s emotionalism, it will stop ; if it is theology, it will be superseded. For our knowledge is fragmentary. When the perfect whole has come, the fragmentary will be out of date. When 1 was a child, I used to talk like a child, I used to think like a child, I used to reason like a child. When I became a man. I found childish things out of date, for now we see but blurred reflection, but then face to face. Now my knowledge is partial, but then T shal] know fully for myself, just as God already knows me. These are the three things which stand the test: faith hope anl love, but the biggest of these is love.” O God, the protector of all that trust in thee, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy; Increase and multiply upon us thy mercy; that thou being our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we finally lose not the things eternal: Grant this. O heavenly Father, for Jesus Christ’s sake our Lord. Amen.