1.03.06. Book 3: 6. First things First

6 FIRST THINGS FIRST

GRANTED that we all need exercise, could we not take it more than we do with the people for whom we are here? Could we not make them more our friends, and find recreation in being with them?

Many a college-worker has found games with his students not less invigorating than the perhaps more perfectly appointed game elsewhere. Some have proved that the exercise taken in the walk to the village for the evening preaching has been none the less recreative because we had the Lord for our Companion and were out on His busi­ness; and we have found it true that, while we communed together, Jesus Himself drew near and went with us, and made our hearts burn within us while He talked with us by the way. What better recreation than the re-creating of the holy Fire? The glow of it makes one strong.

Or, if rest rather than exercise is the need of the hour, there are those who have found it close at hand, or rather it has found them, as they "let the elastic go." Trench, in his Synonyms of the New Testament, tells us that the word used in 2 Thessalonians 1:7, and translated "Rest" means the relaxing or letting down of cords or strings which have before been strained or drawn tight. Perhaps we need to know more of this perfectly simple form of rest, the "letting go" of the strained strings-the relaxation of the tension. And this, in the writer’s experience, is greatly helped by a book which carries the mind far away from the life which presses all around. God’s blessing on those who send such books. For, after all, the mind needs change of air as much as the body. One of the secrets of going on is to get away. This may sound like crossing out a sentence on a previous page; it does not do so. All depends upon where you go when you get away. Breathe tainted air or air that is merely relaxing, and you come back no better. Breathe sea air or mountain air or any kind of air that is pure and strong, and you come back refreshed.

Then, as regards being with our Indian friends not only in work-hours but in play, such a life tends to make us become more and more one with them, and we have opportunities of helping them unknown to those whose recreation is taken entirely, or as much as may be, apart from them. So, even if it meant something of sacrifice, is it not worth a sacrifice? And one of the best of results is that we are on the spot if we are wanted. Suppose by being away out of reach, for the time being at least, we missed a chance to win a soul for Christ or help one nearer Him? Would an eternity of recrea­tion with congenial friends make up to us for that one loss? But some will smile at all this as feeble and foolish, and some will say, "Very un­practical." We can only say, "It works." There are men and women in the mission­-fields to-day who began by going in for the usual round, because they were told they must. But they are just as strong and well now that they have given all up in favour of a life lived with the people and for them; and they can witness gladly to the bond that binds them to their Indian brothers and sisters, all the closer, surely, because they come first in real love, and because they know they do. We can never know an Eastern people-it is fallacious to imagine we do-while we find our chief recreation to be an escape from their companionship into the society of our fellow-Europeans. The people of the land are keenly observant: they mark our prefer­ences in the choice of our friends, as in everything else; if we find our rest and pleasure in being away from them, will they open out to us and let us understand them? No, we shall be farther away from them than we know, and however affectionate they are, there will always be a certain reserve in their confidence, unrecognized by us, perhaps, because we are not near enough to them to know that it exists. Do not misunderstand. The thought of these paragraphs is not to lay down a hard­-and-fast rule for which bondage would be a fitting name. It is rather to suggest that to be recreative, recreation need not draw us away from our people. Sometimes it will, but need it be so always? The tendency of English society to keep us apart has been noted again and again by missionaries in every land. Bishop Steere of Africa writes with force that the company of Europeans keeps a man separate from the people of the land and no one will ever be a good missionary who cannot be happy among them. And Ragland, of India, urges the new recruit to cultivate close contact with the Hindu mind before he has lost his first missionary aspirations, and begun to prefer European society and work, and to look wistfully towards home. A plea urged on behalf of such forms of recreation as take us away from our people not only in the flesh but in the spirit, is that unless we "get some variety, we grow rutty, groovy, morbid, liverish, unsociable, narrow­minded." And so, for the sake of our own character and mental development, we "really must indulge in a little harmless dissipation occasionally." But does it answer? Does it tend to make us gentler under the stress of the contradictions of sinners, more able in quietness to bear up under their burden and their strife? Does it make the work for which we are here more precious? Does it help us to see more to love in the people and less to criticize? If these good things or any of them are wrought in us by that which we call "harmless dissipation" (but try to think the word anywhere near Calvary, and it withers or ever it shapes), then let us continue as we are. But if it be not so, shall we not have done with it?

We are variously made. What rests one wearies another. The great thing is to find what rests us most, what sends us back to our work most truly strengthened and re­freshed in body, soul, and spirit. Our thought here, as all through this booklet, is not to define another’s duty, but to urge that each of us should be sincere in finding out our own. Let us be honest in the determina­tion that we will not sacrifice the spiritual to anything whatever. Recreation for our three­fold being is possible. He who knoweth our frame, and remembereth that we are dust, has wonderful ways of leading us in this matter, if only we are single-hearted enough to be led; and there is a sense, even physi­cally, in which the Joy of the Lord is strength.

Comrades, "First things first," we all say it. Let us do it. And the first thing first of all. What is the missionary’s first thing? Let a missionary speak: "Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh."

Jesus, Redeemer and my One Inspirer, Heat in my coldness, set my life aglow;

Break down my barriers; draw, yea, draw me nigher, Thee would I know, whom it is life to know.

Deepen me, rid me of the superficial, From pale delusion set my spirit free;

All my interior being quick unravel;

Pluck forth each thread of insincerity.

Thy vows are on me, 0 to serve Thee truly- Love perfectly, in purity obey- Burn, burn, 0 Fire; 0 Wind, now winnow throughly;

O Sword, awake against the flesh and slay.

O that in me Thou, my Lord, may see Of the travail of Thy soul, And be satisfied.