Here is God's great lesson: to get, you must give. To accumulate, you must scatter. To find happiness, make others happy. To become spiritually vigorous, seek the spiritual good of others. When you water others, you yourself are watered.

How? Your very efforts to be useful bring out your powers for usefulness. You have latent talents and dormant faculties that spring to light only through exercise. Your strength for labor is hidden even from yourself until you venture forth to fight the Lord's battles or climb the mountains of difficulty. You don't know what tender sympathies you possess until you try to dry the widow's tears and soothe the orphan's grief.

Here's what surprises us: in attempting to teach others, we gain instruction for ourselves. Oh, what gracious lessons some of us have learned at sickbeds! We went to teach the Scriptures—we came away blushing that we knew so little of them. In our conversations with poor saints, we are taught the way of God more perfectly and gain deeper insight into divine truth.

So watering others makes us humble. We discover how much grace there is where we hadn't looked for it, and how much the poor saint may outstrip us in knowledge.

Our own comfort is also increased by our working for others. We endeavor to cheer them, and the consolation gladdens our own heart. Like the two men in the snow—one chafed the other's limbs to keep him from dying, and in so doing kept his own blood in circulation and saved his own life. The poor widow of Zarephath gave from her scanty store a supply for the prophet's needs, and from that day she never again knew what want was.

Give then! And it shall be given to you—good measure, pressed down, and running over.