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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Following the Christ (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 58. The Tuning-Fork for the Best Music
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The Tuning-Fork for the Best Music
But some push on; they go forward; and as they reach the knife they grasp it firmly by the blade. Yes, it cuts, and cuts deep. But they push on, on after the Master. They turn the knife into a tuning-fork. Do you know about this sort of thing? The steel in a knife can be used to make a tuning-fork. The touch of obedience brings music out of sacrifice.
This is the only tuning-fork that can give the true pitch for that sweetest music we were speaking of a little while ago. This is a bit of the power of obedience. It can change a challenging knife into an instrument of music. This is a bit of the strategy of obedience, the fine tactics of sacrifice. The tempter with the knife would hold us back. We seize his knife from his grasp. He can never use that knife again. And we use it to make sweet music to help the marching. What was meant to hold us back now helps us forward.
This is the tuning-fork the Master used. He would have us use it, too. But each one must take it himself, out of the threatening hand that would hold us back. As the call to follow comes we must go on, no matter what it involves. No circumstance, no possible loss, no sacrifice, must hold us back, for a moment, or a step, from following where our Friend calls; only so can we be His friend.
Shall we go on all the way? Or, shall we join the company at the half-way stopping place? Well, it's a matter of your eyes, how you use them. If the knife holds your eyes, you'll never get past it. That knife is like the deadly serpent's glittering eye. If the cobra's eye can get your eye, you are held fast in that awful, deadly fascination.
If you'll lift your eyes, to the Master's face!--ah, that's the one thing, the only thing, that can hold our eyes with gaze steadier than any serpent eye. The face of Christ Jesus, torn by thorns, scarred by thongs, but with the wondrous beauty light shining out, and those great patient, pleading eyes! This it was that held that young Indian aristocrat steady, while he sold all—bit by bit, of such precious things—sold all.
This it was that held steady the young Jewish aristocrat, Paul. He never forgot the light on that caravan road north, above the shining of the sun. He never could forget it. It blinded him. He "could not see for the glory of that light." Old ambitions blurred out. Old attachments faded, and then faded clear out before the blaze of that light. Family ties, inheritance, social prestige, reputation, old friendships, old honoured standards,—all faded out in the light of Jesus' face on that northern road.