| The Glory of the Common Life |
Chapter 2 |
Page 5 |
Life is full of similar contrasts in the value of opportunities. There are commonplace opportunities, and there are opportunities which are radiant and splendid. There are days and days when the best use one can make of money is to give it to those who need it, or to some institution. Then there comes a day, an hour, when some rare and sacred need arises which eclipses in importance, as day excels night in its brightness, all common needs – a need which must be met instantly and heroically and at once. A few times in every good man’s life there comes a moment of supreme importance, when every other appeal or call for help must be unheeded for one which must be answered at once. There are many things which must be done instantly, or they cannot be done at all.
An artist was watching a pupil sketch a sunset scene. He noticed that the young man was lingering on his sketching of a barn in the foreground, while the sun was hastening to its setting. The artist said to his pupil, “Young man, if you lose more time sketching the shingles on the barn roof you will not catch the sunset at all.” This is just what may people do. They give all their time to commonplace things, to fences and barn roofs and sheds, and miss the glorious sunsets. They give to the poor and help them, but have no thought for Christ. They toil for honour, money and fame, and never see God nor get acquainted with him. There are friendships which never reach their possible richness and depths of beauty, playing only along the shore; while the great ocean of love lies beyond unexplored. They miss the really splendid things in life, while they live for the poor and sordid things.
We do not begin to realize how many of us pay heed only to second rate things; while we miss altogether the great thing of love. We spend hours upon newspapers, never reading a book that is worth while. All the best opportunities of life are transient. They are with us today, but tomorrow they are gone. “Me ye have not always.” There is a time for forming friendships, but it does not stay always. Miss it, and tomorrow you cannot find it. There is a time for making a beautiful home life, but soon the time is gone if it is not improved. Impatience, fretfulness, selfishness, irritability, nagging – you know how the beauty is marred, the brightness dimmed, the sweetness embittered by these. When two young people marry and begin to make a home they have almost infinite possibilities before them. But the vision must be seized at once, and not a moment must be lost. “Me ye have not always,” the opportunity says to the homebuilders. Some years after they agree that they have failed, that the vision has faded, that they cannot get it back again.
Page 5