A Christian, speaking in a tin-mining district, said, “suppose I go down your tin mine: after traversing ladders and workings and galleries I come to where a miner is working in his cramped little cutting, damp, hot and uncomfortable. I say to him, ‘This is a poor sort of a dwelling you have got down here, my friend.’ What would he answer?”
“This is not my dwelling,” he would say, “I live up on top. Up there in the fresh air and sunshine is my home, where there are those I love and who love me. I only work down here.”
He went on to illustrate from this to his hearers the wonderful truth that our real home is “up there” where Jesus is; “up there” where, when our work is done down here, we shall rest forever with the One who loved us and gave Himself for us.
What if our “working place” down here is rough and trying sometimes? What if we do meet with trials and temptation? It is only for a time.
Our blessed Lord and Saviour, who trod so perfectly the path of sorrow here, has declared: “I will come again... that where I am there ye may be also.”
ML 07/23/1961