KI 10:15{What a call to confidence, and love, and free, loyal, happy service is this! and how different will the result of its acceptance be from the old lamentation: "We labor and have no rest; we have given the hand to the Egyptians and to the Assyrians." In the service of these other lords, under whatever shape they have presented themselves, we shall have known something of the meaning of having "both the hands full with travail and vexation of spirit." How many a thing have we taken in hand, as we say, which we expected to find an agreeable task, an interest in life, a something towards filling up that unconfessed aching void which is often most real when least acknowledged; and after a while we have found it change under our hands into irksome travail, involving perpetual vexation of spirit! The thing may have been of the earth and for the world, and then no wonder it failed to satisfy even the instinct of work, which comes natural to many of us. Or it may have been right enough in itself, something for the good of others so far as we understood their good, and unselfish in all but unraveled motive, and yet we found it full of tangled vexations, because the hands that held it were not simply consecrated to God. Well, if so, let us bring these soiled and tangle-making hands to the Lord, "Let us lift up our heart with our hands" to Him, asking Him to clear and cleanse them, "Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistles of Christ... written... in fleshly tables of the heart.”
Let Him write what He will upon our hearts
With His unerring pen. They are His own.
Hewn from the rock by His selecting grace,
Prepared for His own glory. Let Him write!
Be sure He will not cross out one sweet word
But to Inscribe a sweeter but to grave
One that shall shine forever to His praise,
And thus fulfill our deepest heart-desire.
The tearful eye at first may read the line
“Bondage to grief!" but He shall wipe away
The tears, and clear the vision, till it read
In ever-brightening letters "Free to serve!”
For whom the Son makes free is free indeed.