Chapter 7
Chapter 7
A young friend, richly gifted, but tied by unavoidable necessity to an office stool, has complained to me that his life afforded no outlet for the suitable exercise of his abilities.
His complaint is a very common one. Many grumble about the monotony of life’s average moments, which the great majority of us have to deal with. The upland paths which provide an ecstatic walk in the stimulating air and the expanding glory of the world are for the few. For most of us, life walks the trivial round and knows the common task. Each morning the bell calls to the same routine of commonplace work. Each hour brings the same program of trivialities. It feels as if there’s no chance for doing anything heroic, anything which will be worth having lived for, or which will shed a light back on all past days, and forward on all coming days.
But there are two or three considerations, which, if worked into the heart, will tend to remove much of this terrible depression.
In the same way a mother desires the best possible for her babes as she bends over the cradle which each occupies in turn, so God desires to do His best for all of us. He hates nothing He has made but has a fair ideal for each, which He desires to accomplish in us with perfect love. But there is no way of transferring it to our actual experience, except by the touch of His Spirit internally and by what we learn from our circumstances externally.
He has chosen the circumstances of our life because they are the shortest path, if only we use them as we should to reach the goal on which He has set His heart. He might have chosen some other country – China, India, Italy, or Mexico. He might have chosen some other age – that of the flood, the exodus, or of the early martyrs. He might have chosen some other lot – a royal court, a senate, a pulpit, or an author’s desk. But since He chose this land, this age, and your lot (whatever it may be), we must believe that these presented the likeliest and swiftest way for realizing His purpose.
If, my brother, you could have reached your truest manhood as an emperor or a reformer, or as a millionaire or a martyr, then you would have been born into one of those positions. But since you are only a servant, a bank clerk, or an ordinary businessman, you will find the materials and possibilities of a great life right beside you.
If, my sister, you could have reached the grandest development of your nature by being a mother, or a rich man’s wife, or a queen, then you would have found yourself placed there. But since your lot is that of a hatmaker’s assistant, a factory hand, or a toiling mother, you must believe that somewhere within your reach, if only you search for them, you will discover the readiest conditions of a noble and useful life.
Who can wonder at the complaints of the purposelessness, the futility, the weariness of life? People either have no plan, or they have a wrong plan. “What’s the fashion?” “What do others do?” “What’s the correct thing?” How much better and wiser to believe that God has a perfect plan for each of us, and that He is unfolding it a bit at a time by the events He puts into our life each day!
Before Moses built the tabernacle, he saw the whole pattern of it in a prophetic vision. In some secluded spot on Sinai’s heights, it stood before him, woven out of sunbeams, and he descended to the foot of the mountain to repeat it in actual curtains, gold, and wood. God usually doesn’t show us the whole plan of our life in a single burst, but unfolds it to us bit by bit. Each day He gives us the opportunity of weaving a curtain, carving a peg, or fashioning the metal. We don’t recognize what we do, but at the end of our life, the disjointed pieces will suddenly come together, and we shall see the symmetry and beauty of the divine thought. At that point, we will be satisfied. In the meantime, let us believe that God’s love and wisdom are doing the very best for us. In the morning, ask God to show you His plan for the day in the unfolding of its events, and to give you grace to do or bear all He may have prepared. In the midst of the day’s engagements, often look up and say, “Father, is this in the plan?” At night, be still, and match your actual actions with God’s ideal, confessing your sins and shortcomings, and asking that His will may be more perfectly done in you, even as in heaven.
We are sent into this world to build up characters which will be blessed and useful in that great future for which we are being trained. There is a niche which only we can fill, a crown which only we can wear, music which only we can rouse, service which only we can supply. God knows what these are, and He is giving us opportunities to prepare for them. Life is our schoolhouse. Its rooms may be bare, but they are littered with opportunities of becoming ready to go for our great inheritance.
Knitting needles are cheap and common enough, but the most beautiful designs in the richest wools can be fashioned on them. In the same way, the incidents of daily life may be commonplace in the extreme, but as the material foundation, we may build on them the unseen but everlasting fabric of a noble and beautiful character. It doesn’t matter so much what we do, but the way in which we do it matters greatly. What we do may or may not live on, but the way in which we perform our common tasks becomes an indestructible part of our character, for better or worse, and forever.
Suppose we meet the daily demands of life with a sloppy and careless spirit, caring only to escape blame, to earn our wage, or to maintain a decent average. Or suppose our one goal in life is to obtain money for our own enjoyment. Isn’t it clear that the lack of excellence or dignity of the motive will react on the whole character behind it? In such a case where the soul is always bathed in such an atmosphere and confronted with such ideals, won’t it be certain and inevitable that it will become sloppy, careless, greedy, and selfish? And when some great occasion arises, it will call in vain for the high qualities of a noble nature.
On the other hand, suppose we take on the little responsibilities of life faithfully, punctually, thoughtfully, and reverently − not for the praise of man, but for the “Well done” of Christ. Not for the payment we might receive, but because God has given us a little piece of work to do in His great world. Not because we must, but because we choose to do it − not as the slaves of circumstances, but as Christ’s freed ones. In this way, far beneath the flow of everyday life, the foundations of a character are laid, more beautiful and enduring than coral, and which presently rears itself before the eyes of men and angels and becomes an emerald isle, green with perennial beauty, and vocal with the songs of Paradise.
For that reason, we should be very careful how we fulfill the commonplace tasks of daily life. We are building the character in which we will spend eternity. We are either building into ourselves wood, hay, and stubble, which will have to be burned out at great cost, or the gold, silver, and precious stones which will be things of beauty and joy forever. Now if anyone builds upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble, the work of each one shall be made manifest, for the day shall declare it because it shall be revealed by fire; the work of each one, whatever sort it is, the fire shall put it to test (1 Corinthians 3:12-13).
Let’s say you are a person of ordinary ability, and languishing like a wood-bird in its cage. It’s likely you will never move into a wider sphere than the obscure one you have been in. Give up your useless regret, your discontented complaint, and begin to meet the call of the insignificant and ordinary with faith in God that He is doing His best for you. Meet the call with tenderness to each person you encounter with heroic courage and unswerving fidelity, with patience, thoroughness, and submission.
Go on acting in this way week in and week out, year by year, with no thought about what other people think, determined always to be your best, eager only to pay out without holding back the gold of a noble, unselfish heart. At the end of life, though you don’t realize that your face glows, others will see you shining like the sun in your heavenly Father’s kingdom. At that time, you will discover that you have unwittingly lived a great life, and you will be greeted on the threshold of heaven with the “Well done” of your Lord.
Some who long for a great life are unconsciously living it in the eyes of God’s angels. Those who forego marriage so they can bring up and educate the younger children in their family; those who deny themselves almost the necessities of life to add some coals of comfort to the meager fire at which the chill hands of age warm themselves; those who are not only pure themselves amid temptation, but who are also centers of purity, shielding others; those who stand at their post of duty though the fires as they creep near scorch the skin and consume the heart; those who meet the incessant demand of monotonous tasks with gentleness, unselfishness, and the wealth of a strong, true heart – these, even though they don’t know it, are graduating toward the front ranks of heaven’s nobility.
“Oh! where is the sea?” the fishes cried,
As they swam the crystal clearness through;
“We’ve heard from of old of the ocean’s tide,
And we long to look on the water’s blue.
The wise ones speak of the infinite sea.
Oh, who can tell us if such there be?”
The lark flew up in the morning bright,
And sang and balanced on sunny wings;
And this was its song: “I see the light,
I look o’er the world of beautiful things;
But flying and singing everywhere,
In vain I have searched to find the air.”
People who daily handle matters largely before the eyes of their companions are expected to act from excellent motives and to conduct themselves in a manner worthy of their great and important positions. I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation with which ye are called (Ephesians 4:1). The statesman is expected to have strong moral principles, the Christian lady to be virtuous, and the minister to be earnest. There is no special credit to any of these people for being what they profess and are expected to be. The current is with them. Their difficulty is to face it.
But surely, in God’s sight, it is a much greater thing when the soul conquers adverse circumstances and rises above the drift of its associations instead of going with the flow. To maintain high moral principles when your companions are uncaring and degrading; to be chaste, when ease and wealth beckon for you to enter the gate of sin; to be devout or zealous, when no one expects it; to do small things from excellent motives − this is the grandest accomplishment of the soul.
It is a greater thing to do an unimportant thing from an excellent motive, for God, for truth, and for others, than to do an important one. It is greater to suffer a thousand stings patiently each day, than die once as a martyr at the stake. And for that reason an obscure life really offers more opportunities for the nurture of the noblest type of character, just because it is less liable to be visited by those selfish considerations of notoriety, applause, or money, which intrude into more prominent positions and scatter their deadly corruption.
We sometimes lay down the storybook or the history book with a groan. We have been reading about some sudden opportunity which came to a Grace Darling reared in the obscurity of a fisherman’s home, or to a Florence Nightingale, or a John Brown, living apart from the great world in the heart of the Adirondacks. “Oh,” we say, “if only such a chance would dip down into my life, and lift me out of it! I’m weary, weary of this dull existence.”
Sadly, this is a common mistake. People think the opportunity makes the hero, but it only reveals him.
In mining, tracing the appearance of a lode or mineral to its head must begin long before, and be done carefully, or else the falling of a single spark would never blast the mighty rocks or shiver the threatening fortress walls. The fabric of strong and noble character must be built up by patient endurance in well-doing, or else the sudden appeal of the critical hour will knock unsuccessfully at the door of life, and the soul will crouch helpless inside without an answer.
If great opportunities were to come to most of us, we would make nothing of them. They would pass us by unnoticed or unimproved. They would bypass us and go to those with more nerve, grit, or spiritual power than us. You can not, at will, speak a foreign language, or dash off a brilliant air upon the piano, or talk easily on the motive of one of Browning’s poems. All of these goals demand long and arduous study. That must be given the first slot in the management of your time; that way if a call for any of them comes suddenly as you watch for opportunities, you will be ready.
You can’t be brave in a crisis if you are habitually a coward. You can’t be generous with a fortune if you are a miser with a limited income. You can’t be unselfish in some such accident which imperils life if you are always pressing for the one vacant seat in the train or omnibus, and elbowing your way to the front in every possible situation. David had to practice with sling and stone through long hours in the wilderness, or he would never have brought down Goliath. Joseph had to be pure in thought and strong in private self-discipline, or he would never have resisted the solicitations of the temptress. The Sunday school teacher must be regular, painstaking, and faithful in conducting his class of little ragged boys, or he will never be promoted to serve his Master as a pastor or as a missionary.
If I were eager to acquire a good employee for a responsible position, I wouldn’t attach much importance to the way in which the candidate acted on a set occasion during which he knew he was being observed, because, of course, he would be on his best behavior. But give me a private window so I can watch him in his least-considered actions − how he behaves at home, how he treats his mother and sisters, how he fulfills the ordinary duties of life. What he is then, he is really.
But if this is man’s way, might it not be God’s way? In eternity, great tasks are to be fulfilled: angels to be judged, cities to be ruled, perhaps worlds to be evangelized. Suitable representatives will be required for these opportunities: those who can rule because they have served, those who can command because they have obeyed, those who can save others because they never saved themselves. Perhaps, even now, our heavenly Father is engaged in seeking those among us who can fill these posts. And He is seeking them not among people like those filling high positions in the eyes of men, but rather He is looking within the ranks of people walking the insignificant routine and fulfilling the ordinary task.
From the nearest fixed star, the inequalities of our earth, whether of Alp or molehill, are similarly insignificant. We need to look at our positions from the standpoint of eternity, and when we do, we’ll probably be surprised at the small differences between the lots in life of people. The one thing for all of us is to abide in our calling with God, to count ourselves as His fellow workers, to do what we can in His grace and for His glory, never excusing ourselves, never condoning failure or wrongdoing, never content unless, by the help of the blessed Spirit, we have worked out His promptings and suggestions to the best of our ability, whether in the gold of the extraordinary or the bronze of the cheaper and more ordinary achievement.
Of course, there is no saving merit in what we do. Salvation comes only through simple trust in our Savior, Jesus. But when we are saved, it gives new zest to life to do everything for Him, as Lord and Master, and to know that He is well pleased in our rightly doing the most trivial duties at home or in daily business.
For what glory is it if, when ye are buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is due to grace from God. (1 Peter 2:20)
May each reader learn this happy skill and go through life offering everything to God, like the priests dressed in white stoles in the temple of old. Indeed, all believers have been made priests unto God. Every sphere of influence can be a holy temple and every act done in the name of Jesus can be a spiritual sacrifice, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Therefore, I beseech you brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies in living sacrifice, holy, well pleasing unto God, which is your rational worship (Romans 12:1).
Minot J. Savage, “Where is God?” in Poems (Boston, MA: G. H. Ellis, 1882).
A legendary Victorian heroine (1815-1842).