Is your place a small place? Tend it with care!—He set you there.

Is your place a large place? Guard it with care! He set you there.

Whate’er your place, it is Not yours alone, but His. He set you there.

JOHN OXENHAM

With infinite care and forethought God has chosen the best place in which you can do your best work for the world. You may be lonely, but you have no more right to complain than the lamp has, which has been placed in a niche to illumine a dark landing or a flight of dangerous stone steps.

The master of the house may have put you in a very small corner and on a very humble stand; but it is enough if it be His blessed will.

Someday He will pass by, and you shall light His steps as He goes forth to seek and save that which is lost; or you shall kindle some great light that shall shine like a beacon over the storm-swept ocean.

Thus the obscure Andrew was the means of igniting his brother Peter, when he brought him to Jesus.

SELECTED

When the Master of all the workmen called me into the field, I went for Him light and happy, the tools of His service to wield; Expectant of high position, as suited my lofty taste— When Lo! He set me weeding and watering down in the waste.

Such puttering down in the hedges! A task so thankless and small! Yet I stifled my vain discomfort and wrought for the Lord of all, Till, meeker grown, as nightly I sank to my hard-won rest I cared but to hear in my dreaming, “This one has done his best.”

The years have leveled distinctions, there is no more “great” nor “small”; Only faithful service counts with the Lord of all; And I know that, tilled with patience, the dreariest waste of clod Shall yield the perfect ideal planned in the heart of God.

SELECTED

Are you willing to be a “caulker of seams” (Ezekiel 27:9)?