Hard Work
Journal 2005 07 02
Hard Work
The men are so tired from their twenty-mile journey over the prairie they fall into camp and immediately fall asleep. Yet both captains note that there is amazingly no complaining among them.
Hard work brings sound sleep. It is a principle that still applies today. Think about what these guys were doing. A marathon is twenty-six miles run in shorts, unencumbered by anything more than a message from a commander in early military times.
Twenty-two miles over the prairie carrying canoes and all kinds of gear. The gunpowder in the lead containers had to be a load by itself. The captains had small desks for writing. Many medicines, instruments and gifts for anticipated meetings with Indian Chiefs. Anything going to the Pacific had to carried by someone’s strength. Some of the items would make a round trip. No high tech backpacks. No rubber air-filled tires. Primitive wooden carts pulled across a prairie whose micro-geology was a series of dirt bumps and cactus dictated by thousands of pounds of bison riding on small bovine hoofs.
I know I made the point yesterday about the distance involved. CCK to SeaTac. Now add no smooth path. Mounds of dirt. Long needles that penetrated your shoes on the cactus awaiting your every step. A higher concentration of rattlesnakes than you’d seen before. And bears. Big brown bears. No matter what you were doing someone had to have a rifle in his hands. Most of the men probably did.
Tough. No body fat. Every joint and fiber strengthened by the extreme labor. The goal was portage around the falls. Little did the men know that it would also be training for a mountain trek the likes of which they could not imagine. The mountains and hills of the eastern seaboard of the new United States were challenging. They were dwarfed by the heights the men would encounter in the snow-topped Rockies looming in the distant west.
Training. Do we see our hard work as training? Most of us hope for an end to hard work. Rest is deserved. A vacation is in order. Doesn’t scripture promise a ceasing from our labor? Yet suffering with eternal glory as the reward is the promise. Suffering, hard work, straining every fiber of our being; preparation and training for His greater glory is the work of the Cross in the church of our times.
Mission requires labor. Labor rides on the strength of the laborer. Work is accomplished by applying effort to a task. The men of the Corp of Discovery must have seen the mission and willingly, joyfully applied everything they had to the task and accomplished much work.
We can learn from them. Are we working so hard we fall into camp and immediately sleep because of the effort we’ve applied to complete the work of the day? Some of you are. Most of us aren’t. If we see hard work as an end to itself that is not enough. If we see it as training and preparation for greatness to come as we accomplish the mission assigned today it takes on divine proportions. Let’s work hard this day!
Hard Work
The men are so tired from their twenty-mile journey over the prairie they fall into camp and immediately fall asleep. Yet both captains note that there is amazingly no complaining among them.
Hard work brings sound sleep. It is a principle that still applies today. Think about what these guys were doing. A marathon is twenty-six miles run in shorts, unencumbered by anything more than a message from a commander in early military times.
Twenty-two miles over the prairie carrying canoes and all kinds of gear. The gunpowder in the lead containers had to be a load by itself. The captains had small desks for writing. Many medicines, instruments and gifts for anticipated meetings with Indian Chiefs. Anything going to the Pacific had to carried by someone’s strength. Some of the items would make a round trip. No high tech backpacks. No rubber air-filled tires. Primitive wooden carts pulled across a prairie whose micro-geology was a series of dirt bumps and cactus dictated by thousands of pounds of bison riding on small bovine hoofs.
I know I made the point yesterday about the distance involved. CCK to SeaTac. Now add no smooth path. Mounds of dirt. Long needles that penetrated your shoes on the cactus awaiting your every step. A higher concentration of rattlesnakes than you’d seen before. And bears. Big brown bears. No matter what you were doing someone had to have a rifle in his hands. Most of the men probably did.
Tough. No body fat. Every joint and fiber strengthened by the extreme labor. The goal was portage around the falls. Little did the men know that it would also be training for a mountain trek the likes of which they could not imagine. The mountains and hills of the eastern seaboard of the new United States were challenging. They were dwarfed by the heights the men would encounter in the snow-topped Rockies looming in the distant west.
Training. Do we see our hard work as training? Most of us hope for an end to hard work. Rest is deserved. A vacation is in order. Doesn’t scripture promise a ceasing from our labor? Yet suffering with eternal glory as the reward is the promise. Suffering, hard work, straining every fiber of our being; preparation and training for His greater glory is the work of the Cross in the church of our times.
Mission requires labor. Labor rides on the strength of the laborer. Work is accomplished by applying effort to a task. The men of the Corp of Discovery must have seen the mission and willingly, joyfully applied everything they had to the task and accomplished much work.
We can learn from them. Are we working so hard we fall into camp and immediately sleep because of the effort we’ve applied to complete the work of the day? Some of you are. Most of us aren’t. If we see hard work as an end to itself that is not enough. If we see it as training and preparation for greatness to come as we accomplish the mission assigned today it takes on divine proportions. Let’s work hard this day!
posted by @2007 Dick Cinkovich | 1:37 PM
|
0 comments
