Lost Opportunities

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 3, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 14.

Lost Opportunities.

EACH period of life has necessities and opportunities of its own, which belong to it, which must be met and realized in it, if they are ever met and realized at all. If opportunities go by, therefore, they are lost. Life lived, cannot be lived over again. The possibilities of childhood, for him who has passed out of it, are behind him, and there they ever will be. He who has gone beyond youth cannot go back to his youth again and gird himself for the growth of that period. He who is treading now amid the stern scenes of life's meridian, cannot start again and climb the eastern slope. If age has come and the shadows have begun to lengthen, there is no vigorous manhood to be extracted—little if any of the work of manhood that can now be done. Rivulets run into rivers; rivers pour into the sea; vapors rise out of the sea, to be borne back over the hills, whence they came, and there distil and flow, a second time, a third time—possibly a thousandth time—through the same channel to the sea. This is nature, but there is nothing in the economy of life corresponding to this. No river of humanity runs back into a rivulet; no sea back into a river. There is but one voyage from the cradle to the grave. . . . It takes no far look to find the poor, the sick, the sad, the lonely, the tearful, the stricken-hearted. The opportunities are many—unremitted.

The trouble often is that we wait for large things to command us, and slight the invitation of little things close on us. A word frequently is of wondrous cheer to some sad heart. A little offering of remembrance—so small that it seems hardly worth while to carry, or send it—may relieve a want that is immediate and intense. Life is made up, not of large things that cost and dazzle, but of words and deeds thrown into the hours as they hurry by. . . . There was a motto on the temple of Delphos which read: "Know thy opportunity." This is one of the great lessons of life which should be learned early. Many do with opportunities as children do at the seashore—fill their little hands with sand and let the grains fall through, one by one, until all are gone.

After all it is contact of soul with soul that wins. God brings men of all classes close to us, that we may love them, and reach them with the truth. Some are scarred all over with sin and crime; are so degraded and repulsive that we shrink from contact with them; but they are men, and down deep within them there is a yearning for the life of God.

This is your time to warn and save. Here is your opportunity. Don't miss it. You cannot do to-morrow the work of to-day. He whom you would save will be elsewhere, or other things will engage you.—Sel.