Sacrifice or Service
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David Livingstone, mighty missionary, who opened in 
Africa the highway marked by tombstones of martyr 
missionaries, said this: People talk of the sacrifice 
I have made in spending much of my life in Africa. 
Can that he called a sacrifice which is simply paid 
back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, 
which we can never repay? Is that a sacrifice which 
brings its own best reward in healthful activity, the 
consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright 
hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the 
word in such a view, and with such a thought! It was 
emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. 
Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, 
with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities 
of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit 
to waver and the soul to sink, but let this only be for 
a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the 
glory which shall hereafter be revealed in and for us. 
I never made a sacrifice. Of this we ought not to talk 
when we remember the great sacrifice which He made who 
left His Father's throne on high to give himself for us; 
Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express 
image of his person, and upholding all things by the word 
of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat 
down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.