By J.R. Miller
"The apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to Him all that they had done and taught." Mark 6:30
It is well for a friend of Christ to maintain the most intimate relations with his Master. There are wise mothers who train their boys to give them their full confidence, telling them all that they do, all that they hear. They report the conversations they have with other boys, and all that takes place when they are at school and at play. The boys are happy who have such mothers. It takes almost infinite gentleness and tact in a mother, to keep such confidence as her boy grows older. Yet there are mothers who are their sons confidential friends, even in their manhood. A boy never goes far wrong--who comes to his mother every evening and tells her all he has done that day.
This is also the ideal relation for the Christian with his Lord. When the apostles returned form their missionary tour, it is said that they "reported to Him all that they had done and taught." It will help us greatly in our Christian life, if we will train ourselves to the habit of reporting to Christ continually, all that we do and say. We may come every evening to His feet and tell Him all about the work and the life of the day.
Each day is a miniature life. We are born in the morning--out of the darkness of the night. We live through the hours until evening comes again, and then we sink away into the death of sleep. Each morning we are sent out by our Master, commissioned by Him to do certain tasks, to touch certain lives, to leave in the world certain blessings, to endure certain temptations, to suffer or rejoice, as the case my be. At the close of the day--we come back to make report, in our evening prayer, of all that we have done, not only the good and beautiful things--the obedience, the kindnesses, the victories over evil, the things that have been helpful to others--but also the foolish things, the disobediences, the defeats, the neglects of duty.
If we remember as we go through the day--that everything we do or say, and everything we fail to do or say--must be reported to our Master, it would make us more careful as the moments pass--of what we do and what we fail to do. We would not do the things which would shame us to look into Christ's face, and tell Him what we did. We will learn to do only what it will give us pleasure to report to Him. It would do much to make us always charitable and kind to others, for we shall not care to tell the Master that we said unkindly words of our neighbors. If we constrain ourselves to report in our evenings prayers--all our criticisms of others, all our uncharitable words, and all our blaming and fault finding--we shall soon be cured of the habit of censoriousness, and we shall learn to do and say only things we shall be glad to tell our Lord.
Yet, we need never dread to tell Christ of our failures for the day. And there always will be failures. Our moods will not always be gentle. Sometimes we will speak rashly and harshly. We will not always be patient and thoughtful. Unchristian tempers will break out in spite of our determination always to keep sweet. We will fail many a time to be loving. But the Master will be infinitely gracious and gentle in dealing with our faults and failures. He is more kindly than a mother. No words in the Bible are sweeter to a faithful Christian, certain nights when he comes to his evening prayer, than those in one of the Psalms. "He knows our frame--He remembers that we are dust." If we are living faithfully and are striving to do our best, and to do better each day--we need never dread to tell our Master all that we have done, even the worst. He wants us to be very frank and very honest with Him. Of course He knows all that we have done--but He wants us to tell Him all, keeping nothing back. We may come with the whole story, even if it be a confession of weakness, foolishness, or sin. He is never severe with us, as some human friends are, for He wants us never to be afraid to come.
It is well to bring to Christ the report of all our earthly affairs, as well as our spiritual matters. All our life, no matter how prosaic, is part of our Christian living. We are serving Christ at our commonest task work--as really as when we are at our prayers. The greater part of what we do belongs to what we call secular things; but we are to do everything in the name of Christ, and are to seek as much to please Him in these duties--as in our acts of worship. We are to put our religion into our carpentering, our farming, our mercantile pursuits, our professional work--doing everything "as unto the Lord," and honestly, conscientiously, skillfully. In our devotional exercises we come into God's presence to have our ideals elevated, and to get strength and wisdom for true Christian living; then in our daily task work, whatever it may be--we go out to live the heavenly life in the common affairs of earth.
In the single verse which contains the holy record we have of our Lord's life from His twelfth to His thirtieth year--we read that He "advanced in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men." But we know that He was not engaged all the time in studying the Scriptures, and in prayer. He was a carpenter's apprentice, and a carpenter all those years, busy in His shop from morning until night. We know that He pleased His Father just as well on His weekdays, when working as a craftsman, as He did on the Sabbaths, when His shop was closed and He was worshiping in the synagogue. He could make report to God at the close of His weekday's toil--just as cheerfully as at the end of His Sabbaths. A writer says, referring to the work of Jesus as a craftsman: "The business of the little day was so done that at the same time it was commerce with the Infinite. Every business transaction was so scrupulously pure and honest as to afford a dwelling place for the Holy Spirit of the eternal God. While He earned His daily bread--He was drawing into His hungry heart the very bread of life. He and His Father were inseparable partners in the making of a household chair, or in the making of a yoke for the ox of the field." Everything He did was done piously, because done to please God.
It should be the same with all of us. The division of our life into secular and religious is misleading. Our weekdays should be as holy as any Sabbaths in the sense that we are to honor Christ as really then as on the Sabbaths, and do the commonest duties according to God's laws. We should do our secular work conscientiously, putting into every part of it, our best skill and taste.
It would be well if young men going into business, would train themselves from the beginning to do all their work so well, so honestly, so conscientiously, while putting their best skill into it--that they can come to Christ's feet when any piece of it is finished and report every smallest detail to Him without shame or shrinking.
No truth is taught more clearly in the New Testament, than that we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, to give an account of our life on the earth. Then all secret things will be revealed. The Scriptures tell us that then, the books will be opened. The opening of books in certain great financial investigations has brought out facts concerning business methods which tarnished hitherto honored and illustrious names. The books will be opened in the judgment--and the records will be read. Nothing is hidden that will not then be revealed. Sometimes we are tempted to think that, because our work is so obscure and no human eyes are likely to see it--it is not necessary for us to do it carefully. But there is an Eye that does see even the minutest details of all that we do, and it is for this Eye that we should work. Then there will be a revealing some time, somewhere, when our fidelity or our negligence will appear. We should do everything with reference to that great opening of all life's records!
There is a machine called the dynograph, recently invented, by which, as the railroad train runs over the road, every unevenness in the tracks is detected and registered. A roll of paper is moved by power received from the wheels of the car. Over this paper are suspended needles containing red ink, one needle for each track. If the track is perfectly smooth and level, these needles make a straight line. If there is unevenness in the track, even the slightest, the line is wavering. Thus the machine ingeniously tells the whole story of the tracks. Just so--the story of every human life is infallibly recorded in the books of judgment. We cannot pass that great day--for what we are not. The truth will be revealed, whether it is good or bad.
If, then, we are to come to the final judgment with confidence and without fear, we must live all our life to please our Master. Report will then be made of all we have done through all the years, and we shall have to account for the trusts reposed in us, for our privileges and opportunities, and for every influence we have exerted. We are not done with life as we live it--we must face it again, every particle of it. It may seem a little thing to do a secret evil thing some quiet day or night. Nobody knows it. It is hidden and dropped out of sight as soon as done. We do not think of it as ever coming up again to plague us; but it will. Jesus said that we must give account of every idle word we speak. If for every idle word, then far more surely for every sinful word, every false word, every cruel word, every word which tempted an innocent soul to do wrong. We must give account to all our life!
In our Lord's parable of the judgment, we read of those who turned others away hungry from their doors, who refused a cup of cold water to those who were thirsty, who failed to show comfort to a sick neighbor. At the time--it did not seem that these neglects were important. But the day the King came--they had to be accounted for. Then it appeared that it was the King Himself who was at the door, asking for bread, or for a cup of water, or who lay sick on the hard bed. We may call nothing in life trivial. Any day may be doomsday; at least, there is never an hour of any day which may not cast its light or its shadow down the years.
There is only one way to disarm judgment of its terrors and its dread. If we live a holy life all our days, if we obey our Lord's commandments, if we do the duty of love faithfully unto the end, if we accept the will of God as the law of our life, and fill our place in the kingdom of heaven with faithful obedience, it will be a joy to tell the Master in that great day--of the things that we have done and to hear Him say, "Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things. Come and share your master's happiness!"
Someone says that the secret of a happy old age--is a well watched past. The secret of any today, is a well watched yesterday. And there is no better way to keep our days beautiful and free from memories which will vex us afterward, than to tell Jesus every night all that we have said and done through the day.
