The Random Thoughts of Henry Holloway
The season for the harvest services has come round again and this year I imagine few people will feel like singing, ‘All is safely gathered in.’ It has been a hard year for the farmers but, nonetheless, the crowds will gather as they always gather for the ‘Harvests’. Some of them will ‘do the rounds’ of as many as possible - like the woman who boasted that she had done seven of them on 3 ½ pence.
Wee Gladys was thrilled one day when a visitor to her home gave her half-a-crown. It thrilled her because all the money she had got before had been pennies. She kept taking it from her purse and examining it and admiring it. Once, when it was in her hand, her mother asked, ‘What will you do with it, Gladys? “I think’ she said, ‘I’ll take it to church next Sunday.’ ‘But why do you want to do that with it?’ her surprised mother asked. ‘I want to give it to God,’ she said, ‘because he never gets anything but pennies either.’
My readers, I hope, will not accuse me of any ulterior motive in relating that story - my own harvest services are over anyway. Frankly I have been both surprised and pleased at the amazing generosity of people. I tell that story just to point the moral that the impulse to share, especially with someone less fortunate than yourself, is a God-given impulse.
The beauty of a sunset is enhanced a hundred-fold when you share it with somebody whose heart is in tune with your own. The loveliest things in life owe much of their beauty to the fact that they can be shared. The utterly lonely people in life are those who have possessions which they share with no one. Life is never rich until we have learned to share the deepest and loveliest things with a friend. I don’t know where I found these words but they are very true:
‘God never loved me in so sweet a way before.
‘Tis He alone Who could such blessings send.
And when His love would new expression find,
He brought you to me, and He said, ‘Behold a friend.’
The whole of life is built up on the principle of sharing. God gives to us of His bounty, enough for the whole wide world, but He trusts us to share. If any are hungry or lonely or sad, it is not because God has failed us, but because we have failed Him.
Think of what we owe to men who have shared with others, in unselfish devotion, their gifts of mind and heart. In medicine alone, we are debtors to men and women of all nationalities who refused to serve any lesser loyalty than the welfare of mankind. Madame Curie refused to patent her discoveries for private profit as did Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin. They gave their healing ministry freely in the service of humanity.
There are some folk I know, and they have nothing to share but a broken heart and a lonely life. Well, why don’t you share it? If lovely things increase in loveliness by sharing, the sorrow that is shared loses half its weight of woe.
‘If you have a burden to bear, share it;
If you have a kindly thought, share it;
When life is glad! When life is sad! Share it.’
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