[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":4},["ShallowReactive",2],{"reading-0426":3},"APRIL 26\r\nI even reckon all things as pure loss because of the priceless\r\nprivilege of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord (Phil. 3.8, Weymouth).\r\nShining is always costly. Light comes only at the cost of that\r\nwhich produces it an unfit candle does no shining. Burning must\r\ncome before shining. We cannot be of great use to others without    cost to ourselves. Burning suggests suffering. We shrink from pain.\r\n\r\nWe are apt to feel that we are doing the greatest good in the world when we are strong, and able for active duty, and when the heart   and hands are full of kindly service.\r\nWhen we are called aside and can only suffer when we are sick, when\r\nwe are consumed with pain; when all our activities have been dropped, we feel that we are no longer of use, that we are not doing anything.\r\nBut if we are patient and submissive, it is almost certain that we\r\nare a greater blessing to the world in our time of suffering and\r\npain than we were in the days when we thought we were doing the  most of our work We are burning now, and shining because we are burning. --Evening Thoughts.\r\n\"The glory of tomorrow is rooted in the drudgery of today.\"\r\nMany want the glory without the cross, the shining without the burning, but crucifixion comes before coronation.\r\nHave you heard the tale of the aloe plant, Away in the sunny clime?\r\nBy humble growth of a hundred years It reaches its blooming time;\r\nAnd then a wondrous bud at its crown Breaks into a thousand flowers;\r\nThis floral queen, in its blooming seen, Is the pride of the tropical bowers,\r\nBut the plant to the flower is sacrifice, For it blooms but once, and it dies.\r\nHave you further heard of the aloe plant, That grows in the sunny clime;\r\nHow every one of its thousand flowers, As they drop in the blooming time,\r\nIs an infant plant that fastens its roots\r\nIn the place where it falls on the ground,\r\nAnd as fast as they drop from the dying stem, Grow lively and lovely around?\r\nBy dying, it liveth a thousand-fold\r\nIn the young that spring from the death of the old.\r\nHave you heard the tale of the pelican, The Arabs' Gimel el Bahr,\r\nThat lives in the African solitudes,\r\nWhere the birds that live lonely are?\r\nHave you heard how it loves its tender young,\r\nAnd cares and toils for their good,\r\nIt brings them water from mountains far, And fishes the seas for their food.\r\nIn famine it feeds them-what love can devise!\r\nThe blood of its bosom-and, feeding them, dies.\r\nHave you heard this tale-the best of them all-\r\nThe tale of the Holy and True,\r\nHe dies, but His life, in untold souls Lives on in the world anew;\r\nHis seed prevails, and is filling the earth, As the stars fill the sky above.\r\nHe taught us to yield up the love of life, For the sake of the life of love.\r\nHis death is our life, His loss is our gain;\r\n\r\nThe joy for the tear, the peace for the pain. --Selected",1783499792956]