| Strength and Beauty |
Chapter 21 |
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There are other periods in every life in which rests are written. There is a time to work and a time to rest. God never intended that we shall fill the days so full of toil as not to leave any time for fellowships of home life, for intercourse with friends, for pleasure and amusement. There is no true music in that living under incessant pressure which hurries on from duty to duty, from task to task, allowing not a moment of leisure, not a restful heart beat, from morning until night. Far sweeter and more beautiful is the life that goes from task to task promptly but never hurriedly. “Unhasting yet unresting,” is one of the wisest of life’s mottoes. No time should be wasted, and yet there never should be any hurrying.
No other life accomplishes in the end so much as one that goes on with rhythmic movement, never loitering, never lagging, yet never in nervous haste. Hurry mars work of any kind. Music is spoiled as much by too great rapidity as by indolent dragging. An old Bible teaching says, “In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.” The most vigorous of the New Testament writers exhorts his young friend to study to be quiet, or as it is in the stronger phrase of a revised version, to be “ambitious to be quiet.” It was not idleness that St. Paul was urging upon Timothy, but the observance of the proper rests in life.
We have need of patience. We should learn to wait as well as labor, to listen as well as speak, to rest as well as toil. There are moments and hours in life when the supreme duty is to do nothing, to stand quiet and patient, waiting trustfully for God to work, or for the time to come when we can act. Immeasurable harm has been done ofttimes by impatience which could not stand and wait.
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