John 6:1-21 After these things Jesus went over the sea of Galilee, which is the sea of Tiberias.… At a flower festival, not long ago, one little, shrinking child laid on the altar-step her tiny offering — it was but a single daisy. The little one had nothing else to give, and with even such an offering, given in a single and with a simple heart, Christ, I think, would have been well pleased. When Count Zinzendorf was a boy at school, he founded amongst his schoolfellows a little guild which he called the "Order of the Grain of Mustard Seed," and thereafter that seedling grew into the great tree of the Moraviar. Brotherhood whose boughs were a blessing to the world. The widow's miter. When they laughed at Saint Theresa when she wanted to build a great orphanage and had but three shillings to begin with, she answered," "With three shillings Theresa can do nothing; but with God and her three shillings there is nothing which Theresa cannot do." Do not let us imagine, then, that we are too poor, or too stupid, or too ignorant, or too obscure to do any real good in the world wherein God has placed us. Is there a greater work in this day than the work of education? Would you have thought that the chief impulse to that work, whereon we now annually spend so many millions of taxation, was given by a poor illiterate Plymouth cobbler — John Pounds? Has there been a nobler work of mercy in modern days than the purification of prisons? Yet that was done by one whom a great modern writer sneeringly patronised as the "dull, good man John Howard." Is there a grander, nobler enterprise than missions? The mission of England to India was started by a humble, itinerant shoemaker, William Carey. These men brought to Christ their humble efforts, their barley loaves, and in His hand, and under His blessing, they multiplied exceedingly. "We can never hope," you say, "to lead to such vast results." So they thought "We cannot tell whether this or that will prosper." But do you imagine that they ever dreamed that their little efforts would do so much? And, besides, they knew that the results are nothing, the work, everything — nothing the gift, everything the willing heart. But have you ever tried? If you bring no gift, how can God use it? The lad must bring his barley loaves to Christ before the five thousand can be fed. Have you ever attempted to do as he did? Have you, even in the smallest measure, or with the least earnest desire, tried to follow John Wesley's golden advice: "Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, to all the persons you can, in all the places you can, as long as ever you can." (Archdeacon Farrar.) Parallel Verses KJV: After these things Jesus went over the sea of Galilee, which is the sea of Tiberias. |
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