JUST COMMON GOOD | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 3, 1904

"JUST COMMON GOOD."

THERE is a story of a small boy who, having come to grief in his effort to do something extraordinary, wrote in his diary the resolution to "Try to be just common good all the time."

It is the "common good" that really counts for most, after all. The great events are rare, and the commonplaces are many—so many that they scarcely give place even to the few unusual happenings. Whatever of joy or sorrow sweeps through the house, they follow close in its train. After the wedding, after the funeral, after the terrible accident, somebody must pick up the scattered articles, begin to restore the wonted order, and set about getting dinner or supper for a humanity that must have its daily food whatever befalls.

Common, little, everyday offices, rendered by hands so familiar to the task that we seldom think to praise them for it, how much their faithful doing means! Our lives are not blessed, nor do we bless others or serve our Master half so much, by remarkable talents and rare heroisms as just by the uniform, common "goodness" of the common days.—Selected.