Decisions – Sunday, July 13, 1941
During the course of every day, each of us is called upon to make many decisions. Some of them are inconsequential, involving nothing more significant than a choice between the wearing of a red necktie or a blue one. But some of them may be very fundamental decisions, involving the first step toward a bad habit, involving a choice between honesty and dishonesty, involving a choice between the acceptance or the rejection of truth.
Such decisions as these are critical, with far reaching consequences, which fact reminds us of the words of the playwright of Avon, who said: “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in misery.” Fortunate are they who recognize this tide for what it is and who make their decisions accordingly. The decision to do something just once that we know we shouldn’t do at all may cause us to miss that tide which would lead on to fortune—perhaps a material fortune, or perhaps, more important, the good fortune of peace of mind and unblemished happiness here and hereafter.
The decision to take some immediate advantage and to pay too big a price for it, may be another cause of missing that tide which would have led on to the high seas of achievement. The decision to accept truth when it is presented, regardless of the immediate cost, is another vital choice. Many who have had a conviction of truth, but who have counted the personal sacrifice of acceptance too great, have hung back and the tide has gone on without them, and truth with it, out of their lives, and of many such it could be said: “That all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in misery.”
For our generation we can have no greater wish that that we might have discernment to recognize the difference between decisions that matter little and those which are vital, and then that we might have the courage and the wisdom to choose always that which is fundamentally sound, regardless of the immediate cost on consequences, and so ride high on that tide which leads on to fortune—the everlasting good fortune of a life well lived.
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July 13, 1941
Broadcast Number 0,621