| The Glory of the Common Life |
Chapter 18 |
Page 7 |
There is no way in which we can half so successfully gather up the broken fragments that we find strewed along the stories of our friendships, our associations with neighbours and business companions, as by doing a great deal of thoughtful letter writing form time to time. Write to the person you think is not your friend, or does not like you. Do not say a word about your past difference or quarrel; just tell him that you have been thinking about him and want to wish him happiness. Write to the man who did you a marked unkindness during the year. Do not remind him of what he did, and do not tell him you have forgiven him. Just tell him that you wish him all the joys of the blessed days. Write to the discouraged person, to the one who is suffering, to the shut in. To have a warm, sincere, encouraging and cheerful letter almost any morning will mean more to thousands of people than anything you could send them.
“Gather up the broken pieces which remain over.” Do at the end of a year, as far as you can, the things you have been leaving undone through the year. Go and say in the right place the kind words you have not spoken but ought to have spoken. Do the duty that for a good while you have been neglecting to do. Gather up the broken things, whatever they may be, as far as you can possibly do it. Finish up the unfinished things. Do the things that have been left undone.
Time is short, and when the end comes, no hustling or hurrying of ours will enable us to go back and do neglected things of past years. It is said in the legend that Father Ventura died before he had finished writing the life of St. Francis, and so Heaven let him come back for three days to finish the work. Dr. Watkinson suggests that if men could come back and complete what they have left unfinished, it would be a strange lot of workers we should find among us. “There would be preachers coming back to preach their unspoken sermons, and what sermons they would be! Sunday school teachers would come back to repair scamped lessons, and rich saints would come back to complete their giving, and what church collections we should have!” But we are not going to come back, any of us, to finish up the work we have neglected along the way. “Night cometh, wherein no man can work.” Whatever we do for God and for man we must do now, as we go along the way. What we get into the year’s story we must put in it in three hundred and sixty five days which make up the year.
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