The Blessing of Willing Work – Sunday, January 11, 1953
There is in most of us a tendency at times not to do anything that is difficult to do, not to perform any unpleasant service or engage in any inconvenient activity. The tendency is often apparent in our younger years when we haven’t yet had to learn some things which later in life, we find that we must learn.
In every family, in every household, in every business and community and country, there are difficult, tiresome, tedious duties to do—and someone has to do them. But sometimes, because of the too indulgent providence of parents or others, young people grow up expecting everything to be placed before them, and sometimes miss learning, until later, the sincere satisfaction that can come with willing work, even in the performance of tedious and unpleasant tasks.
Sometimes they ask: “Why should we work?” “Why should we do anything we don’t want to do?” “Why should we spend any part of our precious days doing difficult things when there are easier and more pleasant pastimes?”
There are many answers to this kind of questioning. One that suggests itself is this: It was a loving Father who gave us work to do, a Father who knows our needs and who holds our happiness close to his heart. (Not that work doesn’t become monotonous at times. Anything can become monotonous, even so-called play or pleasant pastimes if too long pursued or pressed upon us other than at our own pleasure.) Idle drifting never was a source of success or satisfaction. And it wasn’t intended that any of us should live effortlessly or follow our own complete pleasure.
The Lord God made that clear when our first parents were driven forth from the Garden of Eden. Work is one of the greatest gifts that God has given us; not just the labor required for actual existence (even the animals, even the lesser forms of life do what they are made to do or must do for sheer sustenance), but work pursued beyond sheer necessity, for the opportunity to learn, for the power to improve, for the surpassing satisfaction of serving, of creating, of doing, of discovering. And one of the surpassing lessons of life is to learn to find joy in doing things we ought to want to do, even when we don’t want to do them; for any day is a disappointing day if it is allowed to pass without some sincere sense of accomplishment.
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January 11, 1953
Broadcast Number 1,221