While We May

While We May
From Timeless Grace Gems
J. R. Miller, 1910

"The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have Me!" Mark 14:7

Jesus defended Mary when the disciples criticized her anointing of him. They said the ointment should have been sold - and the money

given to the poor, instead of being used for a mere personal service. But Jesus said to them, "The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have Me!" Whatever they did for him - they must do then. In a little while, he would not be with them any more. There would never be a day when they could not minister to the poor, but he would not sit again at Mary's table. If she had not brought her alabaster cruse that evening and broken it - she never would have done it!

If you know that this is the last day you will have a certain rare friend, that tonight he will vanish from your companionship, and you will never see him again - you will surround him with the warmest devotion and lavish upon him your heart's holiest affection while you may.

This is a lesson we should learn well. Opportunities come today and pass - and will never come to us again! Other opportunities will come tomorrow - but these will never return. The human needs that make their appeal to you now - will be beyond the reach of your hand by another day. Whatever kindness you would do - you must do now - for you may not pass this way again.

If we realized this truth as we should, it would make the common events of our life mean far more than they do. We are always meeting experiences which are full of rich possible outcomes. God is in all our days and nights. Opportunities come to us with the hour, with the moment, and each one says to us, "You will not always have me!" If we do not take them as they come, we cannot take them at all.

There are two kinds of sins: sins of omission and sins of commission; sins of doing wrong, as when we do evil things; and sins of not doing good, as when we neglect to do the things we ought to have done.

One comes to you in distress, needing cheer, some kindly help, or deliverance from some danger, and you let the trouble go unrelieved, the sorrow uncomforted, the need unsupplied. The opportunity has passed - and you have missed it. There is a blank in your life; you have left a duty undone.

Everyone we meet any day, comes to us either to receive some gift or blessing from us, or to bring some gift or blessing to us. We do not think of this, usually, in our crowded days, in the confusion of meetings and partings. We do not suppose there is any meaning in what we call the incidental contacts of life, as when we ride upon the bus beside another, for a few minutes; or meet another at a friend's house and talk a little while together; or when we sit beside another in the same office day after day. We are not in the habit of attaching any importance to these contacts with others. We do not suppose that God ordered this or that meeting; that he sent this person to us because the person needs us - and that we are to do something for him; or else we need something, some influence, some inspiration, some cheer - from him. But the fact is - that God is in all our life - and is always ordering its smallest events.

When older people really think of it, they will see that this is true. When they look back over their years, they will find that the strange network of circumstances and experiences that has marked their days, has not been woven by chance, is no confused tangle of threads, crossing and re-crossing, without any divine plan or direction - but rather that it makes a beautiful web, with not one thread out of place! The whole is the filling out of a pattern designed by the great Master of life.

Most of the friendships of our lives are made in this way - you and your friend meeting first by chance, as we would say. You did not choose each other. Emerson spoke for all when he said, "My friends have come to me unsought; the great God gave them to me." All of life - is thus full of God.

Jesus taught the importance of the present opportunity in the Garden of Gethsemane. He asked three of his disciples to keep watch with him while he went deeper into the shadows and knelt in prayer. A great anguish was upon him, and he needed and craved human sympathy. After his first agony of supplication, he came back to his friends, hoping to get a little strength from their love - but found them asleep! In his bitter disappointment he returned to his place of prayer. A second time he came back - and again they were asleep! The third time he said to them, "Sleep on now, and take your rest." There was no need to wake and watch any longer. The hour had come, the traitor was approaching, and the torches were flashing through the trees.

There is a strange pathos in the Master's final words. The disciples had had their opportunity for helping him - but had not improved it. They had slept - when his heart was crying out for their waking. Now the hour was past when waking would avail - and they might as well sleep on!

We do not dream of the criticalness of life, of the mighty momentousness there is in the hours through which we pass: what blessing and good come to us - when we watch and are faithful; what loss and sorrow come to us - when we sleep and are faithless. "You will not always have ME!" is the voice of every opportunity to receive good in some form. We miss God's gift, because we shut our hearts upon it; and only when it is too late, when the gifts have vanished, are we ready to accept them. Or it may be an opportunity to do something for another. We dally, and the opportunity passes. The person perishes, perhaps, because we were not awake!