We All Need the Blessing of Work, March 11, 1920

From the Manufacturers Record, as reprinted on the front page of The Watauga Democrat, Boone and Watauga County, Thursday, March 11, 1920

“My Work! My Work! I Must Get Back to My Work!”

As she lay dying in a Red Cross hospital in France, Miss Jane A. Delano, an American nurse whose life had been given to heroic work said, “My work! My work! I must get back to my work!”

Every man has a work to do which is as solemn a duty as was this work of this nurse, who was literally giving her life for others.

The world is suffering for a thousand things, for food, for clothing, for cars and locomotives and many other things, but the thing which it most needs next to religion is a new conception of and a new consecration to work, not merely because it needs enlarged production, but because, to an infinitely greater extent than it needs food or clothing, it needs a rebirth of character.

Without consecration to work there can be no upbuilding of character.

Without a deeper realization of man’s responsibility to God and man to work with wholeheartedness, with joy for the privilege of working, with the thrill of creative work, whether one can be shoeing a horse, planting a crop, building a locomotive or cooking a meal, there can be no moral advancement.

Into every work one must throw his whole life or else be a failure.

Knowing that the needs of the world are as great as were its needs when this nurse gave her life to serve others, the slacker in work, the shirker, the time-server, the indifferent and indolent are sinning against their own character, against their character forming influence upon their children, against all humanity, and against Almighty God, who is our supreme example as a worker.

Work then we must if we would be honest at heart.

Work we must with all might if we would not, looking deep into our souls see that there is a weakness there which tends toward ultimate moral decay.

Work is Heaven’s great law and our supremist privilege. Indeed, in all the work we do that is honest and honorable, we are co-workers with God.

With God as his partner are we willing to be a slacker and a shirker?

That question every man, rich or poor, employer or employe, old or young, must honestly face now, or in an agony of shame face it on the great Judgment Day.

Let us glorify work as a privilege as well as a duty; as a blessing, not as a curse.