Led, Not Leading by Norman McLeod

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 20, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 12.

Led, Not Leading

By Norman McLeod

My LIFE is not what I would have chosen. I often long for quiet, for reading, and for thought. It seems to me to be a very paradise to be able to read, to think, go into deep things, gather the glorious riches of intellectual culture. God has forbidden it in His providence. I must spend hours in receiving people to speak to me about all manner of trifles; must reply to letters about nothing; must engage in public work on everything; employ my life on what seems uncongenial, vanishing, temporary waste. Yet God knows me better than I know myself. He knows my gifts, my powers, my failings and weaknesses, what I can do and what not do. So I desire to be led, and not to lead; to follow Him. I am quite sure that He has thus enabled me to do a great deal more, in what seemed to be almost a waste of life, in advancing His kingdom, than I would have done in any other way. I am sure of that.—Norman McLeod.