It was Saturday night, and the widow of the pine cottage sat by her blazing fire with her five tattered children by her side endeavoring to lift the heavy gloom that pressed upon her mind. For a year her own feeble hands had provided for her helpless family, for her husband had passed away and she could think of no friend in all the wide and unfriendly world around. It was mid-winter and the snow lay heavy and deep through all the surrounding forests. The last herring smoked upon the hearth before her. It was the only article of food she possessed. In latter times Providence had deprived her of the companion in the person of her husband. Yet to this hour she had been upborne; she had not only been able to provide for her little flock, but had never lost an opportunity of ministering to the want’s of the miserable and destitute.

  The indolent may well bear with poverty while the ability to gain sustenance remains. The individual who has but his own wants to supply may suffer with fortitude the winter of want; his affections are not wounded, his heart not wrung. The most desolate in populous cities may hope, for charity has not quite closed her hand and heart and shut her eyes on misery; but the industrious mother of helpless and depending children, far from the reach of human charity, has none of these to console her. Such a one was the widow of the pine cottage; but as she bent over the fire and took up the last scanty remnant of food to spread before her children her spirits seemed to brighten up, as by some sudden and mysterious impulse, and Cowper's beautiful lines came uncalled across her mind:

                        "Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,

                           But trust Him for his grace;

                        Behind a frowning providence

                           He hides a smiling face."

The smoked herring was scarce laid upon the table when a gentle rap at the door and loud barking of a dog attracted the attention of the family. The children flew to open it, and a weary traveller, in tattered garments and apparently indifferent health, entered and begged a lodging and a mouthful of food. Said he, "It is now twenty-four hours since I tasted bread." The widow's heart bled anew, as under a fresh complication of distresses, for her sympathies lingered not around her fireside. She hesitated not even now; rest and share of all she had she proffered to the stranger. "We shall not be forsaken," said she, "or suffer deeper for an act of charity."

  The traveller drew near the table, but when he saw the scanty fare he raised his eyes towards heaven with astonishment. "And is this all your store?" said he;

"and a share of this do you offer to one you know not? Then never saw I charity before. But madam," he continued, "do you not wrong your children by giving a part of your last mouthful to a stranger?"

  "Ah," said the poor widow, and the tear-drops gushed from her eyes as she said it, "I have a boy, a darling son, somewhere on the face of the wide world, unless heaven has taken him away, and I only act towards you as I would that others should act towards him. God, who sent manna from heaven, can provide for us as he did for Israel; and how should I this night offend Him if my son should be a wanderer, destitute as you, and should have provided for him a home even poor as this, were I to turn you unrelieved away!"

  The widow ended, and the stranger, springing from his seat, clasped her in his arms. "God indeed has provided just such a home for your wandering son, and has given him wealth to reward the goodness of his benefactress. My Mother!

O, my mother!

  It was her long lost son, returned to her bosom from the Indies. He had chosen that disguise that he might the more completely surprise his family, and never was surprise more perfect or followed by a sweeter cup of joy. That humble residence in the forest was exchanged for one comfortable, indeed beautiful, in the valley, and the widow lived long with her dutiful son in the enjoyment of worldly plenty and in the delightful employments of virtue; and at this day the passer-by is pointed to the luxuriant willow that spreads its branches broad and green above her grave, while he listens to the recital of this simple and homely, but not altogether worthless tale. From "Perfect Jewels." Painting by Frank Holl. 

  In the following piece, James Martineau describes two kinds of people. He's contrasting people of faith and those without, and how a lack of faith betrays itself in one's actions.

"You come for the first time into intercourse with a stranger. There is a clear confiding light in his eye, and a free sit in his features, and a frank flow in his speech, which make you feel in a moment that you are not watched, but trusted; that you have no part to play, no cautions to adopt, no prejudices to evade, but simply to lie open as you are, and be believed. You are introduced to another man, more studiously gracious perhaps than the former: but the smile upon his face is not alive; his laugh has not the sincere ring of the vibrating soul; his eye seems to carry his attention beyond what you are saying to yourself; his words, with all their smooth flow, reveal his thoughts and nature as little as a protocol. 

If you admire anything, you feel that you amuse him like a fresh child; and if you are indignant at some wrong, you see that his response is a flash of the lips without any charge within the heart. You stand before the unfaith of the critic, not with the sympathy of the man; and you know what to expect, if you say a thing too foolish or too wise. Each of these men comes into you society with an hypothesis lurking in his heart, -- the one of trust, --- the other, of distrust: these are not conclusions from evidence, no deliberate opinions, but the mere predispositions of their own nature." James Martineau, photo by Mehmet Akin. 

  "When Paul wrote to Timothy from Rome, with his hands chained upon his knee, musing, as he says, with joy, on the tears and embrace of their last parting. He now waits his last sentence, and ere the imperial sword can fall upon his neck, he must see Timothy again. What is the tone of the letter, written at a crisis like that, -- the letter which resigns the expectation so long cherished, of living till Messiah comes?

Does he indite a threnody (prescribe a song of lamentation), of disappointment? Does he caution Timothy against sacrificing himself to impetuous hopes, and tell him that zeal is well enough, but that after all we must take men as we find them? On the contrary, his words fan every noble fire in the young man's heart: like the voice of the retired victor, looking on and feeling the blood glow at sight of the race again, they spur the dear Athlete to fresher effort, and bid him mark the goal. The spirit of fear'-- 'tis no gift of God's; -- only the spirit of love and power! Let the good soldier of Jesus press on in hope, heedless of any shame and hardship that may befall a faithful man; stir up the gift that is in him; be instant in season and out of season; keep a patience never spent by failure; and in the last extremity remember in whom he has believed. Glorious Apostle! Would that every leader's voice could burst, as he falls, into such a trumpet sound, thrilling young hearts that pant in the good fight, and must never despair of victory!" James Martineau.

I had blood drawn by a nurse today and in conversation she asked me what I did in my retirement; I told her about speaking at the correction center and she began making conclusions which many people do, that people are just worse today and they get into a lot of trouble. I recoil from that attitude and explained to her that there are very few who are raised in an intact, loving, nurturing home with both parents that just begin making bad choices and end up incarcerated. I told her a story about a woman who I met here that walked into the front room to find her father laying in the middle of the room with a knife in his chest having tried to commit suicide; she ran to his side where he said he was sorry for not being who he should have been and died while she desperately tried to stop the bleeding. She was five years old. Her father's brother offered her and her mother a place to stay but in a few years he began molesting her until she was 15 and finally ran away. She spent the next 15 years taking heroin to stop the pain and alcohol to make her laugh. She never spent a sober day until she was arrested and got help at the jail where I was privileged to met her.

I explained to the nurse that almost without exception, everyone I meet has a story that contains much heartache. Many have a parent or both who use drugs, some have parents in jail or prison, nearly all experienced some degree of neglect and abuse as children, hiding from violent fathers or mothers, and when I am privileged to have someone share their private stories, they make my heart bleed.
She asked me if it depressed me. A fire rose up in me and I said, "no, it puts a fire in me to try, in the strongest terms I can find, to spark hope, encourage, console, build faith, rebuke, share solutions, correct, inspire to nobility, strengthen resolve, begin new in Christ, continue to persevere in the battle.
I suppose I was ranting a little but we come here because it beats hard in our breast how much Jesus loves you and we want to remind you, guide you, help your future hold wholeness, restoration, addiction free, crime free, depression free living in faith and righteousness!

I come because I heard an old story of Paul, who when breathing threats and violence against Christ and His church, was changed in an instant!
I come because I read the stories of countless conversions over the last two thousand years, I have witnessed with my own eyes conversions and last but not least, I experienced it myself.
I come because I have seen all manner of healing, restoration and success in countless number of people who have suffered horrific circumstances. I have seen countless men who the world would say, "have no hope and no chance," men who have been shot and shot at, addicted to drugs for years, released by Christ and walk in sobriety: some rise up from an alter never to return to drugs; others battle demons for years and with the help of God, friends, family, counselors and perseverance, find freedom. I have seen brutish men, child abusers, wife beaters, brawlers and criminals brought to faith and live out the rest of their lives in love and gentleness; I've seen jail cells turned into sanctuaries, prison bars of the mind and heart swing open wide and souls that have found freedom in Christ while still in the bondage of man.
Some may say, "but how many really listen?" I say, if we talk to fifty men and women a week and only one is changed, that's 52 a year! But that's not all; there are fifty-two mothers rejoicing and fifty-two fathers as well as grandparents and loved ones who have been praying, and their children’s lives changed as well. That one person per week may actually turn into two or three hundred lives that will be touched!

"Strengthen ye the weak hands and confirm the feeble knees." Is. 35:3

The following quote is about the lifelessness that can overtake the soul and reduce the works of charity or religion to nothing more than good habits, lacking the life of the Spirit. In that state we may produce good works by a cold exactitude, but have removed ourselves from the life and struggle of the living  soul, ours or others, where instead of spiritual passion and the heart needs of others as our motive, we become automatic in our doing, devoid of the life of God and love of man.

  "A faithful and reliable man is a priceless and wholesome blessing in this world: but this cold exactitude is not faithfulness. Springing from no life of conscience and graced by no varieties of love, it is neither a sacrifice to God, nor a heart-offering to man, but only that absence of disturbance which arises from an unimpassioned and plodding nature. The human piecework that is got through by those who are content to do much and be nothing is doubtless great. But it is only negative: the moment it ceases to be the expression and outcoming of a living soul, its very copiousness is dearth (an inadequate supply) and its success is failure.

When the regularities of habit and the perseverance of will become simply automatic: however they may pace with the heavier grist (anything that can be turned to profit or advantage) the mill of wealth, they have ever less to offer at the shrine of worship: the windows are darkened through which gleams of divine and solemn light once entered and enriched the soul; the voice loses its mellow tones, and is no longer flexible enough to sing a song of hope to the heavy hearts of sorrowing men. No withered unconcern, no dead exactitude, is fitted for a life like ours, -- a life full of free elements, related not merely to the punctualities of material nature, but to the heaving passions of living men; -- a life strewed with various sorrows and full of struggling nobleness, where no open ear is ever far from the curse, the sigh, the prayer; -- a life of outward heats and inward thirst, that no sleeping millpond can keep clear and fresh, but only the running waters of the pure soul descending from the upland wilds. Neither in the human nor in the Divine existence does the most faultless uniformity in itself constitute perfection."
James Martineau, photo by William Jobes.

  "We love the creation of God and extol the majesty of His hands; but this is not what causes our love and devotion to this Spirit of creativity; It is an all-embracing Love, an inexhaustible holiness, an eternal pity, an immeasurable freedom of affection, whence all the regularities of his will spring forth, a gentle help into every mind, a knock at the gate of every lonely heart which leaves enough behind to visit the private wants of every soul, to linger with tenderness near every sorrow, to be present with rescue in ever temptation. This it is that is the real ground of our trust and love: God is not merely the power of nature, but the Father of Spirits: his resources are not spent and used up in the legislation of the physical universe, but are large enough to overflow freely and copiously into the spirits that are in the likeness of himself."  James Martineau.

  I love this quote, it captures the pervading joy and intimacy we share in the Holy Spirit. Without the pouring out of His love in these ways I doubt I would still be a Christian.