How much he said about my doing nothing, for something stood ready to break through my life with miracle-working in my behalf. This is free grace. It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. The son of Zebedee. That power which we have been exercising as an ambition we find being run through as beauty.
Ambition is ashes.
The promise is beauty for ashes. In this verse this savorless life drops down. The salty savor that Elisha sweetened the brackish, tasteless lot of the theological students at Jericho with, makes beauty everywhere. Notice that in this illustrative exercise the divine in man speaks through the last two gates with two over powering assertions. Through the gate of falling ambition when the divine radiance streams in, it is plain that life is worth living.