| Strength and Beauty |
Chapter 10 |
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This teaching is very important. It matters not what one’s regular calling may be – the commonest daily work, or the most lowly office, or the highest duty of earth – whatever it is, it must always be the first in one’s thought and in the occupation of one’s time. There must be no skimping of one’s daily task. Even a prayer meeting is not so sacred as one’s ordinary duty which fills the same hour, and it will not be right to go to the prayer meeting when in doing so tasks for that hour are left undone.
Sometimes good people get wrong opinions on this subject. They suppose that because it is a religious service or some holy task that invites, they may be excused for neglecting a common secular duty or for being late for some engagement. There have been men who failed utterly, bringing ruin upon themselves and their families, because they neglected their duties in running to prayer meetings or looking after what they called religious interests. There have been women whose homes suffered, and whose children were left uncared for, while they were attending conventions or looking after some social, sanitary, or religious affair outside. They have made themselves believe that the importance of such outside services was so great that even the holiest duties of motherhood and wifehood might be passed by in order that these should be done.
But this is a sad misreading of the divine law. It should be set down as an invariable and inexorable rule that general appeals to interest and sympathy are to be denied until one’s own sacred work has been faithfully done. Nothing is so binding upon us as the duty we have engaged to do. No work is so sacred to us as our own, that which comes to us in our place, which no other can do for us.
After all this duty has been performed with conscientious fidelity, then we may think of doing the other things which we may find to do. Still the question wait, “What shall we do, and what shall we neglect?” There is room always for wise choosing – we cannot do all that we might find to do. There is a vast difference in the value and importance of the various opportunities or appeals which come to us, and we should choose to do those things which bring the greatest good to others, or leave the deepest permanent result.
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