CULTIVATING 
A THIRST FOR GOD

Caught up! Who can picture it? While men and women walk the busy streets, they shall be caught up! While they bow in the secret chamber of prayer, they shall be caught up! While patient, suffering ones lie on beds of pain, they shall be caught up! While the living stand by the open graves of the dead, they shall be caught up!

And as the startled world wonders, the only record left shall be that of Enoch: "And they walked with God and they were not; for God took them" (Genesis 5:24). —James H. McConkey

One winter's night in 1935 Fiorello LaGuardia, the irrepressible mayor of New York, showed up at a night court in the poorest ward of the city. He dismissed the judge for the evening and took over the bench. A tattered old woman, charged with stealing a loaf of bread, was brought before him. She defended herself by saying, "My daughter's husband has deserted her. She is sick, and her children are starving."

The shopkeeper refused to drop the charges, saying, "It's a bad neighborhood, your honor, and she's got to be punished to teach other people a lesson." LaGuardia sighed. He turned to the old woman and said, "I've got to punish you; the law makes no exceptions. Ten dollars or ten days in jail." However, even while pronouncing sentence, LaGuardia reached into his pocket, took out a ten-dollar bill, and threw it into his hat with these famous words: "Here's the ten-dollar fine, which I now remit, and furthermore, I'm going to fine everyone in the courtroom fifty cents for living in a town where a person has to steal bread so that her grandchildren can eat. Mr. Bailiff, collect the fines and give them to the defendant."

The following day, a city newspaper reported: "Forty-seven dollars and fifty cents was turned over to a bewildered old grandmother who had stolen a loaf of bread to feed her starving grandchildren. Making forced donations were a red-faced storekeeper, seventy petty criminals, and a few New York policemen."

As Christians, are we living with an awareness of those in need? Did not our Lord command us to do good works by giving, not only material possessions, but our time, our energy, ourselves? Can you think of someone in need right now? Is there anything you can do to help meet that need? What would Jesus do?

There are many people in the world thoroughly shut in—some by sickness, some by old age, some by special duties that will not allow them to go forth, some surrounded by deluges of misfortune and trouble.

A hand was stretched down from Heaven to close the door. It was a divine hand as well as a kind hand. "The Lord shut him in." You thought it was an accident, ascribable to the carelessness or misdoings of others, or a mere "happen-so." No! No! God had gracious designs for your betterment, for the cultivation of your patience, for the strengthening of your faith, for the advantage you might gain by seclusion, for your eternal salvation. He put you in a schoolroom where you could learn in six months or a year more than you could have learned anywhere else in a lifetime. He turned the lattice or pulled down the blinds of the sickroom or put your swollen foot on an ottoman or held you amid the pillows of a couch which you could not leave for some reason that you may not now understand, but which He has promised He will explain to you satisfactorily—if not in this world, then in the world to come—for He said: "What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter" (John 13:7).

"I can take my telescope and look millions of miles into space; but I can go away to my room and in prayer get nearer to God and heaven than I can when assisted by all the telescopes of earth." —Isaac Newton