borer. After plodding all day in the field, this man comes
home, tired and hungry. Is he promptly cared for? No, he must first cook
and serve his master's meal. Then he can eat what's left. Does he get any
thanks for working overtime? Not a thank. Now, says Jesus, what this man
does under the hard coercion of his lot, you and I must do of our own free
will. After we have done a man's work, let us go and do some more for the
sake of the cause, and disclaim praise. That spirit of utter service is,
in fact, the spirit in which men work when the Kingdom vision gets hold of
them. They become greedy for work and can not satisfy themselves. The
strong and inspired men always feel at the end that they have not done
half they ought to have done. The last words of Martin Luther, scribbled
on a scrap of paper, were: "We are beggars. That's true."

What would Jesus say to a college student who is chronically tired and who
feels that he is laying his professors and his father under heavy
obligation by working at all?

Study for the Week

Is it not a strange fate that down to the most recent times art has
pictured Jesus all meek and gentle, and theology has emphasized his
passive suffering? Yet he was high-power energy. His epigrams and
hyperboles crack like a whip-lash. He was up before dawn. He always rose
to the sight of human need. To do the will of his Father was meat and
drink to him. His life was a combat. He faced opposition without flinching
and "stedfastly set his face to go up to Jerusalem" when he knew it meant
death. Even when he stood silent before the court and when he hung nailed
to the gallows, he was a spiritual force in action and men were disturbed
and afraid before him.

I

He communicated energy to others. He hated mere talk and discouraged
fruitless theorizing. He praised energetic action when he found it, as in
the case of Zacchaeus, and of the men who climbed the roof with a paralytic
man and dug up the roofing to let him down to Jesus. He called that sort
of thing "faith." Faith, in Jesus' use of the word, did not mean shutting
your eyes and folding your hands. He said it was an explosive that could
remove mountains. He gave three of his disciples nicknames, and they were
all given to express forcefulness; Simon he called Peter, the Rock; and
James and John he called Boanerges, the sons of thunder. He sent his
disciples open-eyed to face trouble; he told them the wolves were waiting
for them,