Never make life smaller – Sunday, April 12, 1959
We have talked before of the fact that there is nothing, we ever do that fails to have its effect on, others. People sometimes say that their lives are their own, and that what they do shouldn’t concern anyone else. But everything, in fact, sooner or later does concern someone else.
When anyone ignores the laws of health, for example, and becomes ill, others have to care for him. When anyone flaunts or forgets the laws of safety and is injured, others have to care for him. No one can hurt himself without hurting others also. What hurts us does hurt others. What affects us does affect others.
Furthermore, we have received so much from others, present and past, that we have an obligation to work, to produce, to contribute to the health, to the happiness, to the enrichment of the world. And if we acquire habits, or do those things, or take unto ourselves that which would impair our own output, that which would impair our own capacity or our own powers, we are somehow robbing ourselves and others also—for the world is the product of what everyone has done or made or added to it or taken from it, plus all that the Lord God has given.
And it is sobering to consider how much of the time and effort and teaching and thinking and working of others has gone into the making of each of us, including our environment and opportunities. A thoughtful teacher thus pleaded with his pupils: “Never make life smaller”1—not in any dimension. Don’t destroy but contribute. Don’t impair your own powers or impair the powers or property or possibilities of others.
Remember the parable of the talents: It isn’t enough just to hold on to what we have—or just to let habits keep their hold on us—or to let life become less. We have an obligation to do, to develop, to work, to produce, to think, to repent, to improve.
We shall all be judged by what we do or fail to do with our time and our talents and with all that is ours. And we owe ourselves and all others, and the Lord God who gave us life, an obligation to improve ourselves and our environment—and others also and never let life become less. *
1 Dr. Henry Beaton
* Revised.
April 12, 1959
Broadcast Number 1,547