Plow On!
While the yoke of the Lord Jesus is easy and His burden light, nevertheless the furrow that He calls us to undertake is not always by any means easy plowing. There is no yoke that fits so smoothly and handily as His, but there is no work that requires more steady trudging and persistent faithfulness than His.

Three stages of that work are strikingly set forth by Hudson Taylor when he says, "Commonly there are three stages in work for God: (1) Impossible, (2) Difficult, and (3) Done!"

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Doing little things with a strong desire to please God makes them really great. --St. Francis de Sales

It behooves us to accomplish what God requires of us, even when we are in the greatest despair respecting the results. --John Calvin (1509-1564)

Ladder of Achievement
100% -- I did.
90% -- I will.
80% -- I can.
70% -- I think I can.
60% -- I might.
50% -- I think I might.
40% -- What is it?
30% -- I wish I could.
20% -- I don't know how.
10% -- I can't.
0% -- I won't.

The most unhappy of all men is the man who cannot tell what he is going to do, that has got no work cut out for him in the world, and does not go into any. For work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that every beset mankind -- honest work which you intend getting done. --Carlyle

I believe in work, hard work, and long hours of work. Men do not break down from overwork, but from worry and dissipation. --Charles Evans Hughes

In idleness there is perpetual despair. --Carlyle

When God wanted sponges and oysters, He made them, and put one on a rock, and the other in the mud. When He made a man, he did not make him to be a sponge, or an oyster; He made him with feet and hands, and head, and heart, and vital blood, and a place to use them, and said to him, ? Go to work!? --Henry Ward Beecher

Men are naturally tempted by the devil, but an idle man positively tempts the devil. --Spanish proverb

God never calls a lazy, disgruntled man to a job which requires the finer qualities of real manhood. Every worker may make the commonest job an immortal task. --Charles Stelzle

Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul is the work of the soul, and good for either is the work of the other. --Henry David Thoreau

I have so much to do (today) that I should spend the first three hours in prayer. --Martin Luther (1483-1546)

Christ never was in a hurry. There was no rushing forward, no anticipating, no fretting over what might be. Each day's duties were done as each day brought them, and the rest was left with God. --Mary Slessor

All problems become smaller if you don? t dodge them, but confront them. Touch a thistle timidly, and it pricks you; grasp it boldly, and its spines crumble. --William S. Halsey

Make a Dust
My son, remember you have to work. Whether you handle pick or wheelbarrow or a set of books, digging ditches or editing a newspaper, ringing an auction bell or writing funny things, you must work. Don’t be afraid of killing yourself by overworking on the sunny side of thirty. Men die sometimes, but it is because they quit at nine p.m. and don’t go home until two a.m. It’s the intervals that kill, my son.

The work gives you appetite for your meals; it lends solidity to your slumber; it gives you a perfect appreciation of a holiday. There are young men who do not work, but the country is not proud of them. It does not even know their names; it only speaks of them as old So-and-So’s boys. Nobody likes them; the great, busy world doesn’t know they are here.

So find out what you want to be and do. Take off your coat and make dust in the world. The busier you are, the less harm you are apt to get into, the sweeter will be your sleep, the brighter your holidays, and the better satisfied the whole world will be with you.