SUNDAY COLUMN

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 63, Issue 309, 9 October 1943, Page 5

SUNDAY COLUMN

DEVOTIONAL READING. (Conducted by the Ashburton Ministers’ Association), “Martha was cumbered about by much serving..”—Luke 10: 40. A genial writer has given us a new beatitude—“ Blessed Ibe drudgery”— and in a delightful essay proves that we owe to what we speak of ordinarily as drudgery the best things in. life and character. A child disjikes to be called in the morning and to have to be off to school at the same hour every day, and chafes at rules, bells, lessons and tasks, but it is in this very drudgery of home and school that the child is being trained for noble and beautiful life. The child that misses such discipline, growing up as its own sweet will inclines, may seem, to he fortunate and may be envied, but it is missing that without which all its future career will be less beautiful and less strong. “Blessed be drudgery!” It is in the tiresome routine of hours, tasks, and rules that we learn to live worthily and that we get into our life itself those qualities which belong to true manhood and womanhood. Those who have been brought up from childhood to bq prompt, systematic, to pay any debt on the day, always to keep every promise and appointment, never to die late, will carry the same good habits into their mature life, in whatever occupation or calling it may be spent, and when these qualities will mean so much in success.

Thus, irksome things play an important part in the making of life. We can. shirk them if we will-, but if we do so we throw away an opportunity, for there is not other way to success. Young people should settle it once for. all that they will shrink from no task, no toil, no self-discipline that faces them, knowing that beyond the thing which is unpleasant and hard lies some treasure that can be reached and possessed in no wsxy, hut by accepting the drudgery. Nor can we get some other one to do our drudgery for us, for then the person, not we, would get the reward which belongs to the task-work and which cannot be got apart from it. We must do our own digging. Nothing beautiful or worthy in any department of life was ever achieved or attained without toil. The rich man’s son might easily find some other'one who would be willing to study for him for a money consideration, but no money could buy the gains of study and put them in among his own life treasure. We can acquire knowledge, culture, breadth of mind, only through our own work. It is a misfortune to a young man to be born rich, not to have, to ask, “What shall I do for a living?” unless he has in him the manly courage to enter life as if he were a poor man and to learn to work as if he must indeed earn his bread by the sweat of his own brow. There is no other way to grow into manly character. There is no other way to make life Worth while. We are very foolish, therefore, certainly very short-sighted, t» quarrel with the disagreeable in our lot, of whatever sort it is. The disagreeable is inevitable. We cannot find all things just to our own mind, in even the most human lot in this world. Nor could we afford to miss the thing's that are less pleasant, that are even painful. We shrink from life’s hard battles, hut it is only through struggle and victory that we can reach the fair heights of honour and win the prizes of noble character. We dread sorrow, but it is through sorrow’s bitterness nhat we find life’s deepest, truest joy. It may be said that it is impossible to find a path in this world which has not in it something disagreeable. There always are thorns as well as roses, and usually they grow on the same stalks. There are some dark, unpleasant days in the brightest and most cheerful summer. The sweetest people are apt to have* their disagi’eeable mqods now and then. The most sunny-hearted Mend will likely have a day of cloud now and then. It may be said, that not only is the disagreeable inevitable but it is also the school in which much that is best may be learned. We hold; our life back from sacrifice, but it is only through losing our life that we can even really save it. If we have faith and courage and welcome struggle, cost, pain, and sacrifice, we shall find our feet ever on the path to the best things in attainment and achievement in this world and the highest glory at the last. If man aspires to reach the throne of God, O’er the dull plains of earth must lie the road; He who best does his lowly duty here, Shall mount the highest in a nobler sphere; At God’s own feet our spirit seek their rest, And he is nearest Him who serves Him best.