Making the Most of LifeMiller, J. R. (James Russell)
Philosophy
Making the Most of Life
Miller, J. R. (James Russell)
Christian life
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 began 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
hopes, 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.
The lesson from all this is, that we should finish our work, that we
should allow nothing to draw us away from our duty, that we should
never weary in following Christ, that we should hold fast the beginning
of our confidence steadfast unto the end. We should not falter under
any burden, in the face of any danger, before any demand of cost and
sacrifice. No discouragement, no sorrow, no worldly attraction, no
hardship, should weaken for one moment our determination to be faithful
unto death. No one who has begun to build for Christ should leave an
unfinished, abandoned life-work to grieve the heart of the Master and
to be sneered at as a reproach to the name he bears.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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