Self Help

The Creator can assuredly do many things which he does not ordinarily do. He miraculously provided food and water for the Children of Israel in the wilderness. It is also written that their “clothes waxed not old, neither the shoes upon their feet.” He enabled the Saviour to turn water into wine, and to multiply loaves and fishes to feed a multitude. If it were his will, he might, by the same power, provide us with clothing, without the necessity of our spinning and weaving, and he might endue us with superhuman strength, without our partaking of food. But this is not the manner in which He works, ordinarily. He did not, as a rule, so work even with Christ, his only begotten Son. His usual method of working is to establish laws, provide materials, and bestow upon man intelligence and the physical ability to act and devise and improve his environment. Why should we ask for more? Would it be reasonable to call upon the Deity to work miracles, while we neglect that which he has already put within our reach? God, himself is a worker, why should man be idle? It is not good for men to be idle. Idleness is not conducive to health or happiness, neither from a natural or spiritual standpoint. I am not speaking of course, of hard labor or work beyond our strength or ability, but of self-help rather than helplessness. In anywhere near a normal state of mind and body, men find the highest satisfaction and pleasure in constructive occupation. We may be ready to recognize this, as applied to the mass; but let us apply it also, individually. Let us look about us and take hold where opportunity permits. Solomon says, “In all labor there is profit: but the talk of the lips tendeth only to penury.” And Paul wrote, “If any will not work, neither let him eat.” In all things the proverb holds true that “practice makes perfect”; we learn by doing, and the way opens before us as we move forward. And in all constructive labor, whether natural or spiritual, we become in degree “workers together with God.”

B. L. Little, The Christadelphian Advocate July 1941, p. 148, article "Odd Patterns and Ravelings of Thought