ARE WE OPPORTUNITY BLIND?
By Edison Driver
O, FOR a bigger place to live in, a broader field of work! If we only had a chance! “But there are no opportunities now, all the doors are closed, the way is hedged in;” and “here we are grinding away day after day to no purpose,” when we might be making a big success somewhere, and doing the great things of life! Failure to see opportunities is one of the very common maladies of the day. Many people have eyes; but how poorly they do use them! There are opportunities everywhere. One man finds them and the other does not, that is all. One man builds a palace where his brother finds material for only a wigwam. And so it goes in every line of endeavor. A few years ago a very dear friend of mine was given a missionary license, and sent to work in a small fishing village. He was disappointed and discouraged at the prospect. It was not what he wanted, at all. “They have put me here in this wretched, poverty-stricken place to extinguish me,” he lamented. “There is no chance here.” Poor indeed were the reports he sent to the mission board. Indigo would be bright red compared to some of the letters he wrote to his folks at home. But one day his boat floated off in the tide and left him alone on a little island several miles out from the village. There were fish, however, some berries, and as the weather was mild and dry, a shelter of boughs kept him comfortable. But how lonesome it grew. Everything was still. Scarcely a sea-bird broke the blue monotony of the sky, and only the roar of the surf disturbed the endless quiet. Days passed. O, for the sight of a human being, for the joy of speaking a word to some one! He grew hungry for society of any kind, even the village would be paradise beside that loneliness, he thought. He was there three weeks. When he was able to write home again he said, after telling the story, “I learned something out there. I learned that the world is all gates, all opportunities to the man who will look for them. Wherever one man can speak to another, or write to another, or do a kindness to another, there is a chance.” What was the outcome?—Why, he took off his high collar, made himself one of the people, started a Sunday-school for the children, a class of Bible study for the older ones, visited from house to house, and finally was able to build a small church. The people grew to respect him, and then to love him; he loved them and the poor little village, and when he came to leave it for a greater field he wept, because “there was so much to be done there still!” Opportunities! Why, it doesn’t matter where you are. They are lying everywhere, awaiting the eye that can see, the ear that can hear, and the hand that will do. The world is full of them for the business man, for the scientist, the4artist—whoever he may be, but a thousand times more so for the Christian. Every nook and corner has its chances waiting for him. It is calling him everywhere. It needs him in a thousand ways. It needs his kindness, his gentleness, his love. It needs his “Good morning,” his “God bless you,” and his smile. He has gifts to give more precious than rubies, more prized than fine gold, and sweeter than the frankincense and myrrh of kings, even tho he himself be as poor as was his Master. EDISON DRIVER.