"For the sweetness of life lies in usefulness,
like honey deep in the heart of a clover bloom."
The whole world was a deep, dark blue, for I had waked with a grouch that
morning. While blue is without doubt a heavenly color, it is better in skies
than one's mind; for when the blues descend upon a poor mortal on earth,
life seems far from being worth living.
I didn't want to help with the chores; I hated to get breakfast; and the
prospect of doing up the morning's work afterwards was positively revolting.
Beginning with the usual round of duties-under protest- I had a great many
thoughts about work and none of them was complimentary to the habit. But
presently, my mind took a wider range and became less personal as applied
to the day just beginning. First I remembered the old, old labor law:
"Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the
sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt no do any work."
(Exodus 20:9-10)
It used to be impressed upon us as most important that we must rest on
the seventh day. We may not "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy"
(Exodus 20:8) but we'll not forget to stop working. With our present
attitude toward work, the emphasis should be upon "Six days thou
shalt labor," and if we stick it out to work the six days, we will
rest on the seventh without any urging.
Given half a chance, we'll take Saturday off also and any other day or
part of the day we can manage to sneak, besides which the length of
a work day is shrinking and shrinking for everyone except farmers,
and they are hoping to shorten theirs.
"In all labour there is profit; but the talk of the lips tendeth only to penury."
(Proverbs 14:23)
But really the old way was best, for it takes about six days of work to give
just the right flavor to a day off. As I thought of all these things, insensibly,
my ideas about work changed. I remember the time of enforced idleness
when recovering from an illness and how I longed to be busily at work again.
Also, I recollected a week of vacation that I once devoted to pleasure during
which I suffered more than the weariness of working while I had none of its
satisfaction. For there is a great satisfaction in work well done, the thrill of
success in a task accomplished.
I got the thrill at the moment that my mind reached the climax. The separator
was washed. It was a job I especially dislike, but, while my mind had been busy
far afield, my hands performed their accustomed task with none of the usual sense
of unpleasantness, showing that, after all, it is not so much the work we do with
our bodies that makes us tired and dissatisfied as the work we do with our minds.
We have been, for so long, thinking of labor as a curse upon man, that because
of our persistently thinking of it as such, it has very nearly become so.
There has always been a great deal of misplaced pity for Adam because of his
sentence to hard labor for life when really that was all that saved him after
he was deported from paradise, and it is the only thing that has kept
his descendants as safe and sane even as they are.
"Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways, and be wise; which having
no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth
her food in the harvest. How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? When wilt
thou arise out of thy sleep? Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little
folding of the hands to sleep; so shall thy poverty come as one that
travelleth, and thy want as an armed man."
(Proverbs 6:6-11)
There is nothing wrong with God's plan that man should earn his bread
by the sweat of his brow. The wrong is in our own position only. In trying
to shirk while we "let George do it," we bring upon ourselves our own
punishment; for in the attitude we take toward our work, we make of it
a burden instead of the blessing it might be.
Work is like other good things in that it should not be indulged in to excess,
but a reasonable amount that is of value to one's self and to the world, as is
any honest, well-directed labor, need never descend into drudgery.
It is a tonic and an inspiration and a reward unto itself. For the sweetness
of life lies in usefulness, like honey deep in the heart of a clover bloom.
"Remember The Sabbath"
Laura Ingalls Wilder
(1867-1957)
Beloved American writer and author
of the "Little House" series of books.
A devotional from the book,
"Saving Graces: The Inspirational
Writings of Laura Ingalls Wilder"
Edited by Stephen Hines
(1997)
Broadman & Holman Publishers
Nashville, Tennessee
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