[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":4},["ShallowReactive",2],{"reading-1226":3},"DECEMBER 26\r\nSit ye here while I go and pray yonder (Matt. 26:36).\r\nIt is a hard thing to be kept in the background at a time of\r\nIn the Garden of Gethsemane eight of the eleven disciples were left to do nothing. Jesus went to the front to pray; Peter, James and\r\nJohn went to the middle to watch; the rest sat down in the rear to\r\nwait Methinks that party in the rear must have murmured. They were\r\nin the garden, but that was all; they had no share in the    cultivation of its flowers. It was a time of crisis, a time of   storm and stress; and yet they were not suffered to work.\r\nYou and I have often felt that experience, that disappointment\r\nThere has arisen, mayhap a great opportunity for Christian service. Some are sent to the front some are sent to the middle. But we are made to he down in the rear. Perhaps sickness has come; perhaps poverty has come; perhaps obloquy has come; in any case we are\r\n\r\nhindered and we feel sore. We do not see why we should be excluded\r\nfrom a part in the Christian life. It seems like an unjust thing\r\nthat seeing we have been allowed to enter the garden, no path should be assigned to us there.\r\nBe still, my soul, it is not as thou deemest! Thou are not excluded\r\nfrom a part of the Christian fife. Thinkest thou that the garden of\r\nthe Lord has only a place for those who walk and for those who\r\nstand! Nay, it has a spot consecrated to those who are compelled to sit. There are three voices in a verb-active, passive and neuter.\r\nSo, too, there are three voices in Christ's verb \"to five.\" There\r\nare the active, watching souls, who go to the front and struggle till the breaking of day. There are the passive, watching souls,\r\nwho stand in the middle, and report to others the progress of the fight But there are also the neuter souls-those who can neither    fight nor be spectators of the fight but have simply to he down.\r\nWhen that experience comes to thee, remember, thou are not shunted.\r\nRemember it is Christ that says, \"Sit ye here.\" Thy spot In the\r\ngarden has also been consecrated. It has a special name. It is riot \"the place of waiting.\" There are lives that come into this world\r\nneither to do great work nor to bear great burdens, but simply to\r\nbe; they are the neuter verbs. They are the flowers of the garden\r\nwhich have had no active mission. They have wreathed no chaplet; they have graced no table; they have escaped the eye of Peter and James and John. But they have gladdened the sight of Jesus. By\r\ntheir mere perfume, by their mere beauty, they have brought Him\r\njoy; by the very preservation of their loveliness in the valley  they have lifted the Master's heart. Thou needst not murmur shouldst thou be one of these flowers! --Selected.",1783499794591]