| The Glory of the Common Life |
Chapter 3 |
Page 4 |
One tells of a homely picture which should hearten humdrum life. It shows a poor, discouraged looking horse in a treadmill. Round and round he tramps in the hot, dusty ring, not weary only, we might say, of the toil, but also of its endlessness and its bootlessness. Yet there is more of the picture. The horse is harnessed to a beam from which a rope reaches down the hill to the river’s edge, and there it is seen that the animal is hoisting stones to build a great bridge, on which by and by trains will run, carrying a wealth of human life and commerce. This transforms the horse’s treadmill tramping into something worthwhile. It is not bootless.
There are men and women in workshops, in homes, in trades, in the professions, in Christian life’s service, who sometimes grow weary of the drudgery, the routine, the self denial, the endlessness, of their tasks, with never a word of praise or commendation to cheer them. But if we could see to what these unhonoured toils and self denials reach, what they accomplish, the blessings they carry to others, the bridges they help to build, on which others cross to better things, the picture would be transformed. It is in these commonplace tasks, these lowly ministries, that we find life’s true beauty and glory.
“God’s angels drop like grains of gold
Our duties midst life’s shining sands,
And from them, one by one, we mould
Our own bright crowns with patient hands.
“From dust and dross we gather them;
We toil and stoop for love’s sweet sake
To find each worthy act a gem
In glory’s kingly diadem
Which we may daily richer make.”
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