| Making the Most of Life |
Chapter 23 |
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It is sad to think how much of this unfinished work God’s angels see as they look down upon our earth. Think of the good beginnings which never come to anything in the end; the excellent resolutions which are never carried out, the noble life plans entered upon by so many young people with ardent enthusiasm, but soon given up. Think of the beautiful visions and fair hopes which might be made splendid realities, but which fade out, not leaving the record of even one sincere, earnest effort to work them into reality.
In all lines of life we see these abandoned buildings. The business world is full of them. Men begin to build, but in a little time they were gone, leaving their work uncompleted. They set out with gladness, but tired at length of the toil, or grew disheartened at the slow coming of success, and abandoned their ideal when it was perhaps just ready to be realized. Many homes present the spectacle of abandoned dreams of love. For a time the beautiful vision shone in radiance, and two hearts sought to make it come true, but then gave it up in despair.
So life everywhere is full of beginnings never carried out to completion. There is not a soul wreck on the streets, not a prisoner serving out a sentence behind iron bars, not a debased, fallen one anywhere, in whose soul there were not once visions of beauty, bright hops, holy thoughts and purposes, and high resolves – an ideal of something lovely and noble. But alas; the visions, the hopes, the purposes, the resolves, never grew into more than beginnings. God’s angels bend down and see a great wilderness of unfinished fabrics, splendid possibilities unfulfilled, noble might-have-beens abandoned, ghastly ruins now, sad memorials only of failure.
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