| The Life of Dr. J.R. Miller |
Chapter 13 |
Page 9 |
Always he was cheerful and happy. There was no vain longing for the activities that he felt he would never again be able to take up, for always he was living in the spirit of words written to his anxious friends at the church:
“I understand that when I am physically unable to do the work I would be doing if I were able, it is not my work at all. It would have been mine if I were strong and well. But now my duty is just to rest and be still, and let others do the work which I cannot do. The Good Shepherd’s call to me now is not to follow in the dusty way, but to ‘lie down in green pastures.’ Neither is the time of lying down lost time. Duty is not all activity. Sometimes it is to wait and sing. Nothing is going wrong in my life because I am not in what would be my place if I were well. My ministry is not broken or even interrupted by this experience. My work for my Master has not been stopped – its form only has been changed.”
A chapter in “The Book of Comfort” which came in inspired fervour from his hands on one of the days when he was so feeble he could hardly hold the pen is entitled “When We Are Laid Aside.” The closing sentences enforce the lesson as given earlier to his people:
“We may be laid aside from our active work; but God never lays us aside from Himself. So we need never lay aside our joyous witnessing for Him, His love and His keeping power. If that witness has counted for much when we were active, it can count for more in our inactivity. If we have wasted the days of our activities by failure to witness for Him, we may yet, in Christ’s strength, start today, in our new helpfulness, upon a showing forth of God’s presence in our life that shall gladden Him and change His world.”
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