| Making the Most of Life |
Chapter 17 |
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Dreaming through days and years, however brilliantly one may dream, can never satisfy the demands of the responsibility which inheres essentially in every soul that is born into the world. Life means duty, toil, and work. There is something divinely allotted to each hour, and the hour one loiters remains forever an unfilled blank. We can ideally fulfill our mission only by living up always to the best that is in us, and by doing every day the very most that we can do.
“So here hath been dawning another blue day;
Think, wilt thou let it slip useless away?
Out of eternity this new day is born;
Into eternity at night will return.”
We turn over to our Lord for example, since he was the one life in all the ages that reached the divine thought, and filled out the divine pattern; and wherever we see him, we find him intent on doing the will of his Father, not losing a moment, nor loitering at any task. We see him ever hastening from place to place, from ministry to ministry, from baptism to temptation, from teaching to healing, from miracle working to solitary prayer. His feet never loitered. He lost no moments; he seems indeed to have crowded the common work of years into a few short, intense hours. He is painted for us as a man continually under the strongest pressure, with a work to do which he was eager to accomplish in the shortest possible time. He was always calm, never in nervous haste, yet ever quietly moving with resistless energy on his holy errand.
We ought to catch our Master’s spirit in this celerity in the Father’s business. Time is short and duty is large. There is not a moment to lose, if, in our allotted period, we would finish the work that is give us to do. We need to get our Lord’s “straightway” into our life, so that we shall hasten from duty to duty, without pause or idle lingering. We need to get into our heart a consciousness of being ever on the Master’s errands, that shall be within us a mighty compulsion, driving us always to duty.
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