| The Glory of the Common Life |
Chapter 2 |
Page 2 |
If you knew that this is the last day you will have a certain rare friend, that tonight he will vanish from your companionship, and you will never see him again, you would surround him with the warmest devotion and lavish upon him your heart’s holiest affection while you may.
This is a lesson we should learn well. Opportunities come today and pass, and will never come to us again. Other opportunities will come tomorrow, but these will never return. The human needs that make their appeal to you now will be beyond the reach of your hand by another day. Whatever kindness you do, you must do now, for you may not pass this way again. If we realized this truth as we should, it would make the common events of our life mean far more than they do now. We are always meeting experiences which are full of rich possible outcome. God is in all our days and nights. Opportunities come to us with the hour, with the moment, and each one says to us, “Me ye have not always.” If we do not do them as they come, we cannot do them at all.
There are two kinds of sins, as the old moralists put it – sins of omission and sins of commission – sins of doing, as when we do evil things, and sins of not doing, as when we neglect to do the things we ought to have done. One comes to you in distress, needing cheer, some kindly help, or deliverance from some danger, and you let the trouble go unrelieved, the sorrow uncomforted, the want unsupplied. The opportunity has passed and you have missed it. There is a blank in your life; you have left a duty undone.
“One virtuous and pure in heart did pray:
‘Since none I wronged in deed or word today,
From whom should I crave pardon?
Master, say.’
“A voice replied:
‘From the sad child whose joy thou hast not planned;
The goaded beast whose friend thou didst not stand;
The rose that died for water from thy hand.’”
Page 2