“We Must”

Yesterday’s Spurgeon quote captured what I so often feel when I think of the magnitude of the need in the world. Today he continues with some encouragement from the interaction between Jesus and his disciples when he told them to feed the five thousand –

“Did we say, just now, we could not?  Surely we must recall our words and say, ‘We must.’  Good Master, we must!  …We feel our weakness, but there is an impulse within us that says we must do it, and we cannot stop, we dare not… No!  by the love we bear thy name; by the bonds that unite us to thee; by everything that is holy before God and humane in the sight of our fellow mortals; by everything that is tender and gentle in the throbbing of our hearts we say we must, though we feel we cannot… the Master said to you, ‘Give ye them to eat.’ ‘Ye.’  Let this church feel that it should look upon the world as if it were the only church, and do its utmost as if it had no helper under heaven, but had all the work to do itself… As Christ was the world’s hope, so is the church the world’s hope, and she must take up the charge as if there were not another. Instead of sending some to this town and some to that, she must hear her Master say, ‘Give ye them to eat.’…To stop your ears to the cries of the hungry, or shut your eyes to the wants of the widow and the fatherless, is not the way to relieve famine.  Nor is it the way of doing good in the world, to avoid the haunts of the poor, and to leave the dens of desolation and sin.  It is ours to touch the leper with our healing finger, not to shrink from his presence; it is ours to go and find out the stripped, and wounded, and helpless… Your Master asks of you, Christian, practical, personal service, and your Christianity is worth nothing unless it make you heed his word – ‘Give ye them to eat’ – unless it makes you as individual members, and as a united body do God’s work for the world’s sake and for Jesus Christ’s sake… As far as your power lies, you are to consider yourselves as the world’s hope, and you are to act as such.” – Spurgeon (emphasis mine)