ome travail, involving perpetual
vexation of spirit! The thing may have been of the earth and for the
world, and then no wonder it failed to satisfy even the instinct of work,
which comes natural to many of us. Or it may have been right enough in
itself, something for the good of others so far as we understood their
good, and unselfish in all but unravelled motive, and yet we found it
full of tangled vexations, because the hands that held it were not simply
consecrated to God. Well, if so, let us bring these soiled and
tangle-making hands to the Lord, 'Let us lift up our heart with our
hands' to Him, asking Him to clear and cleanse them.

If He says, 'What is that in thine hand?' let us examine honestly whether
it is something which He can use for His glory or not. If not, do not let
us hesitate an instant about dropping it. It may be something we do not
like to part with; but the Lord is able to give thee much more than this,
and the first glimpse of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus
your Lord will enable us to count those things loss which were gain to
us.

But if it is something which He can use, He will make us do ever so much
more with it than before. Moses little thought what the Lord was going to
make him do with that 'rod in his hand'! The first thing he had to do
with it was to 'cast it on the ground,' and see it pass through a
startling change. After this he was commanded to take it up again, hard
and terrifying as it was to do so. But when it became again a rod in his
hand, it was no longer what it was before, the simple rod of a wandering
desert shepherd. Henceforth it was 'the rod of God in his hand' (Ex. iv.
20), wherewith he should do signs, and by which God Himself would do
'marvellous things' (Ps. lxxviii. 12).

If we look at any Old Testament text about consecration, we shall see
that the marginal reading of the word is, 'fill the hand' (_e. g._ Ex.
xxviii. 41; 1 Chron. xxix. 5). Now, if our hands are full of 'other
things,' they cannot be filled with 'the things that are Jesus Christ's';
there must be emptying before there can be any true filling. So if we are
sorrowfully seeing that our hands have not been kept for Jesus, let us
humbly begin at the beginning, and ask Him to empty them thoroughly, that
He may fill them completely.

For they _must_ be emptied. Either we come to our Lord willingly about
it, letting Him unclasp their hold, and gladly dropping the glittering
weights th