Acts 1:4-8 And, being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem… No wise man or woman will enter hastily upon any great work. In proportion to the greatness of the work is the amount of thought, care, and training necessary for its successful accomplishment. History will teach us that those enterprises have usually been most successfully accomplished for which the workers have been most carefully trained. We know that the higher the class of work the more skill is required in the worker, great delicacy is required in the treatment of the raw material; time and care and skill must be used in its manipulation, otherwise no high degree of perfection can be looked for in the fabric to be produced. We often find that nothing is easier than to spoil or damage that which we are trying to improve or refine. And the more we study the matter the more shall we be convinced that what the world terms ability or power — in other words, the possession of skill — is not so often an innate gift, as a faculty gained by much study and practice. These truths are, if we may use the expression, true in the highest degree with regard to Church workers and all kinds of Church work. The material upon which they work, and with which they work, is the most delicate and the most easily spoiled in the whole world; for that material is the heart, will, mind, conscience, character of man. The fabric they are endeavouring — by the aid of God's Holy Spirit — to produce is human nature refined, purified, ennobled, brought by long and careful training into Christlikeness, continually made more and more to approach and resemble the perfect Example, Type, and Pattern of the Divine humanity. But ere the active, aggressive missionary work to which the apostle had been called, commences, there is to be a solemn period of pause, during which they may at once meditate upon the experiences of the past and fit themselves to receive the promised gift. Through haste we often fail together, and preserve the results of experiences through which we have passed; through haste we also often fail from want of preparation to use aright an opportunity when it presents itself to us. The loss is then double, for it is the loss both of harvest and of seed-time. We forget to reap; we are not able to sow. (W. E. Chadwick, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: And, being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me. |
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