Something to Do | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, Cal. · Jul 1, 1875

Something to Do.

"IF I only had something to do," exclaimed a weary devotee to society; "there are servants enough to do the housework, sewing I know nothing about, of music and drawing I am heartily tired. If I could only do something grand—something that would make me famous; if I could follow in the footsteps of Florence Nightingale or—"

Just here Hannah looks in. "Please, Miss, a ragged little fellow at the door says, 'Will you please give me a bit of bread, or something, for my sick mama? She is very sick and has nothing to eat.'"

"That is all a made-up story, Hannah. You should know better. Tell him to go to work and earn his bread, instead of begging it through the streets."

The kind-hearted Hannah slips a few pennies from her own pocket into the child's hand and sends him away, the fine lady having refused the very work for which she had been sighing. And she is only one of a thousand. Because work finds its way to our hands unsought, or because it chances to be something so common, found in the everyday grooves of life, we often let pass the opportunity for doing good, looking for wonderful things ahead, forgetting that it is only in the present we can act.

Those persons whose reputations for charity, noble deeds, and self-sacrifice, are world-wide, did not go about seeking for something that would engrave their names on the monument of fame, but strove, day by day, to perform well each task that came before them. Their deeds of love and mercy were performed to render others happy, not to aggrandize themselves. We cannot all stand on the topmost round of the ladder of life, but we can cling fast to the one on which we rest, while we strive for, and look aloft to, the next.

There is something for every one to do. No one need be idle who has sufficient energy to bestir himself. If you can do nothing more than speak a kind word to some burdened, suffering heart, do that, not in the hope of a reward, but because your soul so yearns to comfort this sorrowing one that you cannot help doing it. If, perchance, you are a servant, and out of patience with the petty duties you have to perform, remember it is not the "position that degrades the person, but the person that dignifies the position." Do well the work ready for you, resting assured that if God intends you to labor in other fields, he will open a way for you to enter there. If you are doing the best you can, you have no cause for discouragement, but, if you are not, if you have not yet awakened to the duties and realites of life, give a few moments' thought to the object for which you are living, asking yourself if the world is any better or happier for your being in it. Do not waste your time in idle complaints when you should be wide awake, ready to seize the first opportunity of being useful. There is no use in going through the world with our eyes and hearts shut. Open both, and do not close them at the first unseemly picture that presents itself.

Should you receive reproaches instead of thanks, even then do not let the smile fade from your face in despair; for you know there is One who does not keep accounts as mortals are apt to do, and who overlooks not the smallest item.

"Let us then be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait." —Household.