At Summer's End…

The passing of any season is somewhat sobering, or any day, or any period of the past. When a season begins, when a day begins, we think what we will do with it−what we haven’t done−what we should do. At the beginning of summer, we think what we will do this summer season, with family, with friends, with many anticipated activities. But time runs us a race that it always wins, and seldom do we exceed−and much more frequently fail to do fully−what we felt we should have done, what we intended to do.

We are often torn between wanting to press much into life, and wanting to live in quiet content. No one can always continue in intense activity with full effectiveness, but anyone will deteriorate if he doesn’t plan and continue in purposeful pursuit. Yet it little seems likely that on any day, or in any season, we will do everything we intended to do. There will always be work left undone. He who has done everything he intended to do, has lost his interest in life, or at least his best reason for living.

Creation is a continuing process, and we cannot conceive of a heaven or a hereafter, in which there will not be work to do, worlds to create and conquer. An eternity of idleness, of cloud-drifting inactivity, would be no heaven at all. Here or hereafter it is not likely that anyone would be content without the opportunity and incentive to be anxiously engaged in a good cause. Always we should set for ourselves a little more than we can accomplish, so that we will reach for it, but not become unduly discouraged because we don’t fill the full measure of what we intended to do each day, or in any summer, or in any season−so long as earnestly we have something to show for the effort of the hours−something constructive to look to and say,” this I have done this day.”

Thank God for the passing days, for the passing seasons, for the accomplishment of every hour, and for the one assuring fact that keeps us from an inconsolable frustration−the fact of the everlastingness of life, and that there will be work to do, and worlds to conquer, always and forever.