Do It When It Needs Doing

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 16, 1911

Do It When It Needs Doing

THE time to do a thing is when it needs doing. After a plant has died of drought, it is useless to water it. While it needed water, perhaps a little water would have sufficed; now even a deluge would be utterly useless. The time to do a thing is, also, when we are able to do it. The time may come when opportunity will appeal to helplessness, and will necessarily appeal in vain. The ability to do may not long be ours. Perhaps the saddest pictures we can gaze upon are the visions of what might have been; but no tears can blot out our blunders, and no vain wishes can put life into the bloodless limbs of the deeds we did not do. The time to do good is when opportunity appeals to ability; when God and humanity call us to do our best.—Selected.