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CHAPTER
10
OPPORTUNITY
EVERY
life affords opportunities for building up noble character. We are sent into
this world to build up character that will be blessed and useful in that great
future for which we are being trained. There is a niche which only we can fill,
a crown which only we can wear, music which only we can waken, service which
only we can render. God knows what these are, and is giving us opportunities to
prepare for them. Four
things come not back—the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the
neglected opportunity. Heaven
gives us enough when it gives us opportunity. Remember you are responsible for
opportunities as well as for talents and for time. Improve them as one that must
give an account. If you think your opportunities are not good enough, you had
better improve them. Make hay while the sun shines. As a general rule, those who
have no opportunities despise small ones; and those who despise small
opportunities never get large ones. Accident
does very little toward the production of any great results in life, though some
times what is called a “happy hit” may be made by a bold venture. The old
and common highway of steady industry and application is the only safe road to
travel. It is not usually accident that helps a man in the world, but purpose
and persistent industry. These make a man sharp to discern opportunities and
turn them to account. To the feeble, the sluggish, and the purposeless, the
happiest opportunities avail nothing. They pass them by seeing no meaning in
them. If great opportunities were to come to most of us, we could make nothing
of them. They would pass by us unnoticed or unimproved. They would go from us to
those who had more nerve, or grit, or spiritual power than we. You
can not just because you will, speak a foreign language, dash off a brilliant
air upon the piano, or talk easily on the motive of one of Browning’s poems.
All these demand long and arduous study. “As
we have therefore opportunity, let us do good onto all men” (Galatians 6:10).
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