The First Opportunity by Christian Union

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 21, 1883

The First Opportunity

By Christian Union

Most people want to begin at the top. Instead of taking hold of the first piece of work that comes to hand, and driving it through as if it were the grandest thing they ever expected to do, they either decline it because it does not meet their tastes, or they do it in a half-hearted way because they take no real interest in it. Their thoughts are so far in advance of what they are doing that the thing in hand is only half done. It is the use of the first opportunity that makes a second opportunity, but thousands are always waiting for the second to come first; they are expecting miracles when they ought to be working along the normal lines of success. It is the boy who takes a place in the country store and puts brains, strength, and heart into the weighing of sugar and the measuring of potatoes, who finally sits down in his office in a great warehouse and telegraphs his orders to the ends of the earth; the other boy, who wanted to be a great merchant, by omitting the sugar and potatoes continues in the obscurity of his native village. These small duties, these meager opportunities, are the training-schools of success, and no one gets the prizes who does not take his degree in them.—Christian Union.