Do your best, then step back – The Tao Te Ching
Don’t get tired of doing good – II Thessalonians 3.13
In 1870, Christopher Sholes invented the typewriter, and thus the QWERTY keyboard. He didn’t use any real science to come up with the best placement of the keys in correspondence to the relative strength of our fingers and the frequency with which each letter is used (Lt Commander August Dvorak, USN did that in 1944, but no one seemed to notice). To this day the keyboard of your computer has the same key placement as Sholes’ 1870 prototype.
Our deeds are seeds, seeds that bear fruit far into the future, far beyond our field of vision, and our life’s span.
Once a deed is performed, once thought becomes will and will becomes action, that action will bear fruit. It may take time. Some deeds spring up like timothy or bamboo. Some take a century to mature like a Joshua Tree or a Seguaro Cactus.Louise Covey, who is a singularly gifted educator of small children, and who retired from our preschool at the end of last school year, often mentions the lessons about teaching she learned, as a little girl, from her grandmother. Which little girl, or boy that she taught will pass those very lessons on to another generation? How many generations will those good lessons continue to bear fruit?
How many years does it take Uranium to lose its radioactive properties?
How many years does it take for a good deed to loose its good influence?
Don’t get tired of doing good, Paul tells us in his second Thessalonian letter. More to the point of our discussion is something he wrote the Galatians: And let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we shall reap, if we do not grow weary. (Galatians 6.5)
We need to cultivate in our own hearts trust and patience – trust is the power of goodness, and patience that goodness will germinate.
