Allowed To Serve

God's Little Devotional Journal for Women-By David C. Cook

When British Prime Minister William E. Gladstone was facing one of the greatest crises of his political life, he sat down at two o'clock one morning to write a speech he hoped would help him win a great political victory in Parliament the following day.

At that hour, the mother of a poor, dying cripple saw the light on in his home and knocked at the door. She asked him to come and bring a message of hope to her son.

Without hesitation, Gladstone left the half finished speech on his desk and spent the remainder of the night with the child, leading him to Christ before he died. As morning light was breaking, he went back to his study and faced his own day with a smile of confidence and peace. Later that morning he said to a friend, "I am the happiest man in the world today." When asked why, he replied that the previous night he had been allowed to serve a child in the name of the Master.

Later in the day, Gladstone made the greatest speech of his life in the House of Commons and carried his cause to a triumphant success. Were the two events related? Gladstone could never be convinced that they weren't.

The world is full of two kinds of people: the givers and the takers. The takers eat well-but the givers sleep well.

What opportunities has God laid at my doorstep to serve others?

Whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.
Luke 14:33