It is worthwhile to be wise in the use of time.
In eternal life, there is no waste of years. It is with the time that we purchase everything life has that is good. It is the wise use of the time that we make ourselves competent for eternity.
The most reckless spendthrift in the world is the one who squanders time.
Money lost, maybe re-gained; friendships broken may be renewed; houses and lands may be sold, or burnt, or buried, but maybe bought or gained or built again. But what power can restore the moment that has passed? The day whose sun has set? The year that has been numbered with the ages gone?
It awes me when I think of it, that there was a time when you and I were not–when the cycles of eternity swept onward and the stars turned in their courses without the sight or sound of man. But now there can never come a time when you and I shall not be. The vast gift of eternity has been laid in your hands and mine: an eternity not wholly to come, but one which is even now here.
Shall we not use its hours right?
The question of life is not, “How much time do we have?” For in each day, each of us has exactly the same amount.
We have “all there is.”
The question is “What shall we do with it?” Shall we let this priceless gift slip away from us in haphazard deeds, or shall we adopt some plan of saving and of systematic doing in our lives? What shall this plan be? How shall we determine what things are worth giving time to? Let us think about this question. There is time enough given to us to do all that we mean to do each day and to do it gloriously!
Let us lay hold of work.
There can be no happy life without strenuous unremitting work in it–work which occupies mind, body, heart, and soul. But what work shall we set ourselves to do?
This is one of the questions that meet up when we leave school, and that reappears from time to time as we see more of the possibilities of life. We fear making mistakes! We do not want to throw our powers away by building walls of sand when we might have built monuments more lasting than bronze.
There are three questions that we may ask about work before we decide to take it up.
Is it legitimate? Is it individual? Is it vital?
How many kinds of work would be cut out with honest answers to these questions?
By legitimate, I mean, does it conflict with any present known duty? If so, that work is not for our hands to do. If we attempt it we are leaving our duty undone, and are become a busybody in other men’s matters.
By individual, I mean, is it a work that belongs to me alone? It is a wonderful truth that not one of us is put into life without a special and particular work to do. Emerson says, “Nature arms each man with some faculty which enables him to do easily some feat impossible to any other.” How true this is! In all the universe of God, there are no two souls alike. There are no two with the same work to do. There are no two whose talents are rivals, or whose gifts conflict or interfere. How this thought ought to put an end at once to all the envy of life–grieving at another’s good. What I can do my neighbour cannot. Why should either of us be jealous of the other, or imagine that we conflict? Each human soul can say: I am unique.
In all the worlds, in all the ages, there has never been anyone like me, and in all time there shall never be again. I have no double.
Is the work vital? Is it of eternal moment, either in strengthening my own character, or inspiring others, or helping the world? If so, the work is worth doing.
Let us not try to escape our work, nor shirk it. Above all, let us not fail to see it. As long as we live we have work to do. We shall never to too old for it, nor too feeble. Illness, weakness, fatigue, sorrow–none of these can excuse us from this work of ours. That we are alive today is proof positive that God has something for us to do today. Let us ask ourselves as we arise each morning, “what is my work today?” We do not know where the influence of today will end. Our lives may outgrow all our present thoughts and out dazzle all our dreams.
“Today is, for all that we know, the opportunity and occasion of our lives. The success and completeness of our entire life may depend on what we do or say today. It is for us, therefore, to use every moment of today as if our very eternity were dependent on its words and deeds.” (Turnbull)
If we do not do the work we were meant to do, it will forever remain undone.
In the annals of eternity, there will be some good that is lacking which we could have provided; some reward that is unbestowed; there will be something incomplete in all the everlasting years. Oh, the sorrow of opportunities neglected, slighted, or despised! Oh, the remorse for the good we might have done, and did not! Do they not bring regret and pain to the sensitive soul?
Again, this work of ours, whatever it may be, will never pass away. We are a part of the great world of energy: no atom of its force is ever lost. Every breath of our lives, every noble heartbeat, will pulsate through all eternity. Our lives are indelible, imperishable.
Let us lay hold of the happiness of today.
Don’t we go through life blindly, thinking that some fair tomorrow will bring us the gift we miss today? Poor mortal, when do you think then to be happy? Tomorrow? What is tomorrow? How is it different from today? Isn’t it but another today? Know if you are not happy today, you will never be happy.
Today is given to you to be patient, to be unselfish, to be purposeful, to be strong, eager, and to work mightily. If you do these things, and if, you do them with a grateful heart, you will be happy.
Let us lay hold of common tasks and affections.
Let us lay hold of the tenderness that belongs to them. Shall we miss all the divine sweetness of life in order to have an ambitious career? Shall we shed home, family, and relatives, in order to learn strategic management, supply chain logistics, or philosophy?
This is a great danger, and a grave one it is, that is apt, at some time or other, to confront us all— the danger of substituting some intellectual ambition for the ordinary human affections.
Ambition is, in many ways, the most deadly foe we have—the most deadly foe to our character, I mean.
Little by little that intellectual ambition will draw us away, if we are not careful, from our place in life, and will make cold, unloved, and unhelpful women, instead of the joyous, affectionate, and unselfish women we might have been.
We need not try to annihilate ambition, but let us keep it in bounds. Hold it in a just proportion in our lives. We don’t need to let our talents lie idle or neglect to make the most of them.
Let us lay hold of friendship.
In eternal life shall we not have friends forevermore? I used to think that friendship meant happiness. I have learned that it means discipline. No matter how hard we look, we shall never find a friend without faults, imperfections, traits, and ways that vex, grieve, annoy us. Hard as we try, we, ourselves, can never fully fulfill the ideal of us that is in our friend’s mind. We inevitably come short of it. But don’t give up friendship, though we have found this true.
To have a friend is to have one of the sweetest gifts that life can bring. To be a friend is to have a solemn and tender education of soul from day today. A friend gives us confidence for life. A friend makes us outdo ourselves. A friend remembers us when we have forgotten ourselves, or neglected ourselves. He takes loving heed of our health, our work, our aims, our plans. A friend may praise us, and we are not embarrassed. He may rebuke us, and we are not angered. If he is silent, we understand. It takes a great soul to be a true friend— a large, steadfast, and loving spirit.
One must forgive much, forget much, and bear much. It costs to be a friend or to have a friend. There is nothing else in life, except motherhood, that costs so much. It not only costs time, affection, strength, patience, love. Sometimes a man must even lay down his life for his friends. There is no true friendship without self-abnegation, self-sacrifice.
Let us be slow to make friends, but, having once made them, let us pray that neither life, death, misunderstanding, distance, nor doubt, may ever come between us, to vex our peace. Let us be patient, let us be kind, and let us be self-possessed in friendship. Let us be true to our friends, and then believe that they are and ever will be true to us. True love never nags. It trusts.
One of the dearest thoughts to me is this: that a real friend will never get away from me, or try to, or want to. Love does not have to be tethered, either in time or eternity.
It is a great and solemn thing to say to another human soul: Your joys shall be my joys. Your sorrows shall be my sorrows. In absence, you shall yet be near. You shall never be so far from me but that I can hear your voice in the twilight and in the night. Though land and sea divide us, you shall yet walk by my side. Still, I shall feel the touch of your hand and rejoice in your sympathy. With you, I don’t need to be too greatly reserved. To you, I may speak the deep thoughts of my heart. With you alone, I laugh. With you, I shed tears and am not ashamed.
Let us lay hold of sorrow.
Let us not be afraid of it, for when grasped firmly, like the nettle, it never stings. The life that has not known and accepted sorrow is strangely crude and untaught. It can neither help nor teach, for it has never learned. The life that has spurned the lesson of sorrow, or failed to read it right, is cold and hard. But the life that has been disciplined by sorrow is courageous and full of holy and gentle love. Without sorrow life glares. It has neither half-tones nor merciful shadows. Disappointment, in life, is inevitable. Sharp sorrow, at one time or another, will come to each of us, if indeed it has not already come. But this same sorrow is a gentle teacher and reveals many things that would otherwise be hard to understand.
Sorrow passes. “See,” says a keen observer, “how little trace a single sorrow, even a great one, leaves in any life.” He did not mean that the influence of sorrow is slight. He only meant that life is greater than sorrow, and need not be overborne by it.
There is no new sorrow. We shall be called upon to bear nothing that has not been borne before. Does not this thought quiet the wild clamour of life? Shall we murmur at our lot when unnumbered mourning hearts, as sensitive, as true, as loving, as our own, have been breaking under the weight of the same sorrow that oppresses us today, have met this grief of ours, whatever it may be, and have conquered it? Shouldn’t we now, in turn, try to bear the cross more bravely than any that have gone before, that we may give strength and courage to the weary ones who must bear it after us?
Every day of meeting sorrow superbly makes life grander. Every tear that falls from one’s own eyes gives a deeper tenderness of look, of touch, of a word, that shall soothe another’s woe. Sorrow is not given to us alone that we may mourn. It is given to us that, having felt, suffered, wept, we may be able to understand, love, bless.
Let us lay hold of faith.
Strong, serene, unquenchable faith in the loving-kindness, the wisdom, the guidance, and the redeeming love of human kindness, will enable us to look fearlessly toward the end of the temporal existence and the beginning of the eternal, and will make it possible for us to live our lives effectively, grandly!
Letting go the unworthy things that meet us—pretence, worry, discontent and self-seeking; and taking loyal hold of time, work, present happiness, love, duty, friendship, sorrow, and faith, let us so live in all true personhood as to be an inspiration, strength, and blessing to those whose lives are touched by ours!