On Making Decisions – Sunday, August 23, 1953
Further in this matter of making decisions: Taking time to decide is frequently an essential factor of safety. But there is also such a thing as taking too much time. The power of decision is sometimes seized from us by too long a delay.
We should never be too swiftly persuaded in a matter of important choice; neither should we wait so long that we let life waste away. Time is fluid and ever flowing, and circumstances are altered by each instant. It is not possible to reconstruct any absolutely identical set of circumstances.
Once we close a door we never open it again on exactly the same scene, We are never standing still—not even in indecision; not even in inactivity. Time will be different in another hour, in another instant. And even if all the other elements could remain unaltered, the passing days and seasons take their toll from the total, regardless of, what we do or fail to do.
But still we must not be pressed into panic or rushed into deciding wrongly, for there are false and foolish steps as well as safe and sure ones; urges to evil as well as to good; steps down as well as up—all of which further impresses the need for a prayerful approach to all decisions in all the choices that are offered; and for predicating each step upon sound principles, with faith that the next step will show itself.
We have to keep moving; we have to start; we have to work; we have to make a living, even when things aren’t just as we would want them. Honest, useful work, honorable, constructive activity (even if it isn’t just what we want) is immeasurably better than inactivity and may open up other avenues that will lead to what we want, or to something better than we now know.
We have to make decisions as they come, as soundly as we can, not being stampeded, not being rushed into wrong ways, but taking the first sound step we can see—and having faith that He who helped us see the first step will then help us see the second and will help us to find something solid and satisfying, provided our motives are honorable, our labor is honest, and our approach to problems is prayerful and full of faith.
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August 23, 1953
Broadcast Number 1,253