top of page
Search

The Attribute of Service

It is with great joy that the Spirits come into your presence. Joy because you waited with as much patience as you could muster and joy because, in spite of weariness and almost disinclination, you gave yourself entirely into their charge. Little things to you, perhaps, but in God's sight they are great indeed. To do what the heart desires may bring fleeting happiness, but to do that which the physical shrinks from builds up beauty hereafter which shall never fade or pass away.


Understand something of what this training time is producing. Of necessity, because it is preparation, again and again tests have to be applied in direct opposition to the physical will. In this application those free from the flesh suffer far beyond your imagination, and the sufferings of the Father are untold. Could you but grasp this fact it would take from the heart and mind that sense of chill and of despair. You would know then that every discomfort which passes through your nervous system not only echoes but finds its reflection on the Spirit side; that pain intensified a hundredfold!


Still, as the Spirits come into your midst with joy, it is not their intention to pour coals of fire on something which is already raw and burning. They would not add one drop to the burden which you are bearing, nor cause self-reproach in your mind. They simply try to destroy that devil of loneliness which tortures you most in a way most terrible to behold!


Think for a little while about that wonderful attribute which is so closely associated with the Master; The Attribute of Service. Take the very broad view, God's View. It is necessary to have your mind prepared to a certain extent in order that you may distinguish between points which are rather fine.


God never forgets the large part you take, although you think this is so again and again. At times when you are hard-set, that too is God's Will, in order to build up for you later on that which what would otherwise be impossible.


When these things happen it is not lack of consideration from those who are free from the bondage of the flesh. In the Spirit World they are not allowed to make such mistakes. The Christ Himself would intervene if any act or any thought were brought into connection with this work in which self had a place, and lack of consideration for others is self in one of its ugliest forms. So take heart for tomorrow!


Service is closely connected with work. But if you put them side by side you would see that they differed enormously. One has the glory of God upon it and the other only has the light of this world to make it bright at all. Service is as the sun, with its warmth and power and brightness. Work, in its literal sense, is as the flame of a candle lighting up that which is densely dark, but very little more. Sometimes it even makes the shadows look darker under its flickering beams.


Get this comparison firmly in your mind. Try and see how far removed service is from work, and that although there can be no service without effort, it is effort in so spiritualised a form that it stands apart, up there, forever and ever more!


In regard to the giving and the doing, there is this point which is sometimes overlooked. There is that form of service of which in your world there is no outward or visible sign, but to the Spirits it is there, tangible and beautiful; and will be found of solid worth in the days to come. This is the finer side, the side which is removed from the active into the passive, from your point of view. It is the service of thought which sometimes, very often it seems to you, is so limited in its expression as to be not in evidence at all. You know how it is. For instance, take the heart and mind of a parent, and all those castles in the air which they build around their child. Sometimes they are not of a very wise character, but anyhow they represent gifts of a kind which they long to shower upon the life committed to their care.


When you are a parent you plan and you build and you create a host of things with which to endow the child of your heart. Yet as time goes on very often the parent looks round with a sense of keen disappointment, and sees that hardly one of those dreams have come true. It is a saddening experience from the physical point of view, saddening and disappointing as well. But God knows best. Those fathers and mothers who have mentally brought so much and laid it before the child they have reared should take comfort, for hereafter you shall find, if your thoughts and your wishes were disinterested, that they brought to the loved one that which no one can take away!


In the world today there are great minds and big sympathies. Sympathies so wide and unlimited that their owners construct mental schemes for the welfare of mankind of so comprehensive a nature that they are classed instantly as fantastic by those who never put together one altruistic thought during their years on earth. Sometimes these people are not practical, they think on the lines of Utopia. When their time comes to lay down the body very often they look back with regret and bitterness to remember the dreams they had for the raising up of humanity and that these were able to produce nothing, and instinctively they agree with their candid critics that they had been foolish indeed!


Of course you know people like this, all sorts of names have been invented for them, and their enthusiasm more often raises a laugh than a thrill of admiration. But, in God's Name, they have built better than they knew. When spiritual sight is their own they shall see in all their loveliness those thoughts and hopes established forever in the realms of the spirit.


Do not be deceived by the outward and visible signs in a physical world so limited. Take the God view, and forever cast aside that most distorted impression that only that which produces concrete results is of worth, either to humanity or to God.


In this world the material, in the form of possessions, holds an undisputed sway. The gifts of the spirit pass unnoticed, except by the small minority. The majority of people brighten up at the thought of a present; some because they like to gather to themselves things which are their own and others because the present reflects the love behind it. That is the spiritual view to take. But in regard to presents, substitute possessions for those gifts of thought which never can take a tangible form at all. You have friends who are kind and generous, and these friends joy in giving of what they have and, in so doing, to distribute a little of that brightness which they long to bring you. That is beauty indeed, but the thoughts and the prayers of which you are totally ignorant are the gifts which will stay when the others have passed away. These are the gifts which come direct from God through the channel of the heart and mind of another, and this being so are Divine and permanent, even as God Himself.


So get these things in their proper positions. In time to come there may be those who will give you tangible things, those which are very desirable and which are meant for you by the Father. But such gifts are as the pebbles on the sea-shore in comparison with the thoughts and the desires of others for your happiness during the days of sadness and of trial. When you pass over and get spiritual sight it will grieve you enormously to look back and see how often you passed over that service which is of God.


The little unnoticed acts, the unspoken thoughts, the unmentioned prayers, these then will stand out as the stars on the dark night of your physical experience, and it will almost break your heart to think that you did not heed them and that you passed them by as of no importance whatever.


You see now the gulf there is between work and service! You see also that the finest form of service there is, more often than not, leaves no outward evidence of its being. You should watch for it with your spiritual sense, by that bigger you within, and give it it’s first and right position in your daily life.


It is a big subject. You have had to take the outer ring only, in order to build up something which is fairly complete in your mind. But inside that ring is all the inner meaning; all the truth which is of God. Think it over and develop in your own way what has been said. Bring into being all that vast expanse which has been left to your imagination. First, the service of thought, and then the service of doing and of giving. After that there is a big gap, and then comes work; work that is clean and wholesome, work that is linked to the spirit because it is a form of self-discipline and of training in the way of subjecting the senses to the domination of the energy-side of the mind. That is rather difficult to understand, but it means to suppress, when necessary, the longing for a comfortable chair and a cosy fire; and to do that which is not interesting and is sometimes disagreeable as well. That kind of work is linked to the spirit and has God's blessing upon it in a way you cannot understand while in the flesh.


Then consider "working because you must". That's not so bad as you might think. The mere fact that it goes against the grain is giving strength of a very definite kind to the spirit within and creates, of necessity, better conditions in a material way for the days to come.


The last is that which is chained to the earth; the work for gain and for self. Don't dwell upon that because it is a very ugly picture, however you may look at it. Selfishness is of all things the most unlike to God, because it is in direct opposition to Love, which God represents. Therefore, from a spiritual point of view, selfishness is the ugliest thing created by humanity.


Take heart of grace, because there is not one who has not given service, disinterested service, which, to your mind, has shown no harvest at all. That is very hard to bear; it seems unjust and is frightfully disappointing as well. The Spirits don't overlook that, but they could not agree, not even out of the great sympathy they have with you over it all. They could not agree because they can see the fair landscape as it really is; so promising, so healthy, and so certain to flower.

So once more take the bigger view, which is God's view, and be sure that what He has promised shall be fulfilled. Those who wait upon the Lord, hard though that waiting may have been, shall see in the bright tomorrow such a vision of things worked out, that the barren past will be wiped out by the glory and the blossom of the present!


Throw out sufficient trust in the spirit to let the personal go by. In climbing a steep hill a staff is a very great help, but sometimes the spirit lays down that staff and struggles up the next portion without its aid. It is progress, as you will see at once. But, although you may not have a material and visible sign of help, you have always by your side, invisible to you but there so definitely to the Spirits, the Saviour! He never forsakes and He never lets go! That should comfort you. Now and again the children of the earth, surrounded by much that tries and frets them, release their hold on the Christ, but the Christ never lets go of them, remember that. Over and over again He closes the wounds in heart and mind, gives strength to the faltering, hope to the despairing, and lifts their eyes up to the golden horizon, when sorrow will be no more.


Try and cling to this thought. Try and remember that although you feel lonely, that no one understands, the "One so kind" is there. Even as He understood the plight of His friendless child, so He understands all that you fear so much, and all that these dark days bring out in the way of pain and disappointment.


Let the Christ come in! This has been said over and over again to the masses, but the Christ understands that sometimes the barriers seem too great. Although you may relinquish your hold on the Master, He never lets go of you, and never will for all Eternity!


God blesses you and keeps you in the brightness of His Face. He blesses you with peace, with hope and with a renewed faith; blesses you with His Love and gathers you under the Wings of Power, shutting the world outside and bringing harmony within.










103 views

Recent Posts

See All

OUR ADDRESS:

 

The Greater World

3-5 Conway Street

Fitzrovia

London

W1T 6BJ

 

NEW NUMBER

02030110893

greaterworld@btconnect.com

NEAREST TUBES:

 

Warren Street (Northern and Victoria Line)

 

Goodge Street

(Northern Line)

 

Great Portland Street

(Circle, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan line)

NEAREST TRAINS:

 

London Euston

(Euston Road)

 

 

London Kings Cross

(Euston Road)

 

London Paddington

(Praed Street)

 

© 2023 The Greater World

bottom of page