One cannot have an omelette without
breaking eggs by J. R. Miller The goal of noble living
is to gather new virtue and grace from all life's struggles, cares,
and sorrows. A mark of all noble character
is its desire to do hard things. The man who seeks only easy things
will never make much of his life. One who is afraid of hard work
will never achieve anything worthwhile. In an art gallery, before a lovely
masterpiece, a young artist said to Ruskin, Ah, if only I could
put such a dream on canvas! Dream on canvas? growled the
old master. It will take ten thousand touches
of the brush on the canvas to put your dream there. No doubt,
many beautiful dreams die in the brains and hearts of people
for lack of effort to make them realities. In all departments
of life, this indolent, easy-going way of getting on in life is
working its mischief. People do only what is easy and
never grapple with anything that is hard. Indolence is the bane
of countless lives. They do not rise because they
have not the courage and persistence to climb. There are too many
people who try to shirk the hard things. They want to get along
as easily as possible. They have ambition of a certain
sort, but it is ambition to have the victory without the battle,
to get the gold without digging for it. They would like to be
learned and wise, but they do not care to toil in study and
burn the midnight oil, as they must do, if they would realize
their desire. They may have a certain longing
to be noble and Christ-like, with a character that will command
respect and confidence, but they have not the spirit of self-denial
and of earnest moral purpose, which alone can produce such
a character. They may want to be godly and
to grow into worthy manhood, but lack that passionate earnestness
which alone will yield vigorous piety and manly virtue and the
heroic qualities of true Christlikeness. Mere holy dreaming will yield
nothing better than spiritual effeminacy. No religion is worthy
which does not seek to attain the best things, and the best
can be won only by the bravest struggle and the most persistent
striving. we should not forget that no
one ever did anything of great value in this world without cost. A quaint old proverb says, one
cannot have an omelette without breaking eggs. If we would do
anything really worthwhile that will be a blessing in the world,
we must put into it not merely easy efforts, language, sympathies,
conventional good wishes and courtesies that cost nothing. We must put into it thought,
time, patience, self-denial, sleepless nights, exhausting
toil. There is a legend of an artist
who found the secret of a wonderful red which no other artist could
imitate. The secret of his color died
with him, but after his death an old wound was discovered over
his heart. This revealed the source of the
matchless hue in his pictures. The lesson of the legend is,
no great achievement can be made, no lofty attainments can be reached,
nothing of much value to the world can be done, except at
the cost of heart's blood. I labor, struggling with all
his energy, which so powerfully works in me. Colossians 1.29