Here's a thought for today: People will forget how fast you did a job, but they will always remember how well you did it.
Henry Ironside says that when he was a boy, he worked for a Scottish shoemaker, or cobbler, as Dan Mackay wished to be called. It was Henry's responsibility to pound leather for shoe soles.
A piece of cowhide would be cut to suit, then soaked in water. Henry had a flat piece of iron, and with a flat-headed hammer, he pounded the soles until they were hard and dry.
It was tedious and seemed endless to young Henry. What made his task worse was that a block away there was another cobbler shop, and Henry noticed that man never pounded the soles at all. As Henry looked in the window, he could see that the man took the soles from the water, nailed them on and with water still splashing from them, he drove each nail in.
One day, Henry ventured inside and timidly said to the man, "I notice you put the soles on while still wet. Are they just as good as if they were pounded?"
The man gave Henry a sly look and said, "They come back all the quicker this way, my boy!"
Feeling he had learned something, Henry related the incident to Dan Mackay, his boss, and suggested he was wasting his time pounding the leather dry. Mr. Mackay stopped his work and said, "Henry, I do not cobble shoes just for the 50 cents that I get. I am doing this to help people. I expect to see every shoe I have ever repaired in a big pile when I stand before God one day. I don't want the Lord to say, 'Dan, you did a poor job here.' I want Him to be able to say, 'Well done, good and faithful servant.'"
Oh, that each of us would envision our own efforts this way. If we truly understood how much our diligence matters to the almighty, I think we would do better every day.
God will help you to live this way, if you just let Him. God bless you, and have a great day.
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Watson is pastor of the Bella Vista Assembly of God. The opinions expressed in this column don't necessarily reflect the views of the newspaper.
Religion on 09/10/2014