p. 8 | The Blessing of Work by March

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 27, 1910

The Blessing of Work

By March

LIVE for God in common things. Do your work purely and faithfully when there is no one to say it is well done. Make the unwritten history of your life faithful in good words wisely spoken, in kind deeds thoughtfully done, in the silent expression of meekness and purity and love. Cherish the feeling of companionship with Christ in all the walks of life. Do not despise or neglect anything that was of sufficient importance to receive the attention of the Son of God.

All needed and profitable work is of God. Work is the honorable inheritance and the healthful discipline of the sons of God. Work is a ladder let down from heaven on which redeemed men climb to the seats of the blessed. Work makes the feeble strong, the timid brave, the poor rich, the wretched happy. Man attains the perfection of his being by becoming a coworker with God in filling the universe with light and blessing.

Idleness is the invention of the great adversary who enticed man away from his God-given work in paradise, and who ever lies in wait to deceive and destroy unwary souls. The tempter comes in the hours of ease, and he is most sure of his prey when he finds men with nothing to do. Idleness enfeebles the mind, and shrivels up the heart, and debases the soul, and takes away all the meaning and beauty and joy of life. The most pitiable and wretched man on the face of the earth is the man who has time and talent and health and riches and nothing to do. For the lazy man, life has no purpose, and labor has no reward. For him the flowers have no perfume, and the birds no song. In vain for him the morning spreads its glories on the mountains, and the evening sets its stars in the sky. He knows nothing of the greatness which patient effort and high achievement give to character, nor of the divine joy with which self-denial fills the soul. He makes himself a burden to every enterprise for the world's advance, a blot upon the immortal page where the brave and the good are writing their names for eternity. It were better to be a brute, and sweat in the harness or tug at the plow, than possess the faculties and the soul of a man, and yet refuse the work which God has set for man to do.—March.