Chapter XLIX: Green Fruit

Say, fellows, did you ever spend two days making a kite and just about the time she was all ready, bridles adjusted and tail properly balanced, it set in to rain?

Can't you see that beautiful thing, done in blue, all spangled over with silver stars, leaning up there in the corner, panting for its maiden voyage into the empyrean? And you have wound on a stick a fine strong cord from the ball you purchased and hold it in your hand as you stand by the window, looking with disgust and disappointment at what seems to be developing into "a United States rain." No, son, you might as well get a book and settle down for the afternoon, for there is no kite-flying to be done to-day. Thank your silver stars if you get her up by tomorrow!

And right here, fellows, make a note of this: whenever you are balked in a scheme, stopped in your plans--right spang up against a stone wall!--ninety-nine times out of a hundred it will prove a godsend and a blessing to you in the end--IF you take it right.

I wish every fellow could get the habit under such circumstances, of stopping still a moment and saying to himself: "Hey here, this thing has a _meaning_--what can it be?" That will yield a better dividend than fretting over the interruption. As a rule, he will discover something he can be doing while he waits, something that immensely strengthens the main chance.

When Lord Clive, "the founder of the Empire of India," sailed from England for Madras, at the age of eighteen, all impatient to enter upon his life plan, storms overtook the ship and so far diverted her course that within a month young Clive found himself stranded in a port of Brazil instead of India. There he had to remain nine months before he resumed his voyage; but what did he do? Chafe over the interruption and delay? Bless you, no; he seized the opportunity to master the Portuguese language, which accomplishment proved to be a tremendous asset later on, in his great constructive work in India.

Paul and Silas, as they travelled through those provinces of Western Asia Minor, all afire with their great purpose of preaching the Gospel, met blank disappointment. Upon arrival at each point they were confronted with an unmistakable message from the Holy Spirit to keep their mouths shut. What could it mean? What was the use? Should they give it up? Should they sit down and sulk? No, said Paul, we will keep agoing; the Lord will show us what He wants us to do when He is ready. And sure enough, the big orders came one night in a vision to Paul, in which a man appeared and delivered to him the great Macedonian Call--the call which opened up to that patiently waiting servant "God's Greater Plan" for his life--a far more splendid one than he had ever dreamed of.

Fellows, I cannot give you any finer thing out of that period of Paul's life, so full of fine things, than the thought of patient waiting upon God's plan--His plan _for you_. And it does not mean to sit still; rather the contrary. "All things come to him who (hustles while he) waits." That is the revised version of an old saw, and I like it better.

Here is a sad case of a young fellow I know. He had an ambition to shine, but he wasn't willing to do the tedious grinding and polishing so vitally necessary to shining. He had a chance at college, but he also wanted to be a social lion, all too soon. He could not afford it in the first place; he couldn't spare the time from his studies, in the next place; but he spent his dad's money anyhow and he let his classes go bang. He did the social stunt--on credit. Result: he got E's and F's on his grades and he was shipped. The faculty regards that kind of a student as demoralizing to the morale of a first-class institution. In fact he could not be called a student; he was an "inmate," and it is hard to make an alumni out of inmates.

This young fellow landed back home for the summer, "out of luck," in debt, and a cruel disappointment to his doting parents. He had done the social stunt, but he picked the fruit before it was ripe, and now it's hurting him inside.

_He flew his kite in the rain!_

He decided he would make good by being a civil engineer. He wanted to be a civil engineer right away, but when he started in he found that the first stages of civil engineering consisted in carrying a chain and a rod up and down hill in the heat and taking orders from a smart chap who looked through a telescope and made notes, so within a few days he quit; he wasn't willing to pay the price. He thought he would play the violin, but he wasn't willing to spend hours practising the scales and simple fingering, so he laid aside the violin. He wanted to play Schubert's Serenade right off, but on learning the cost, he contented himself with whistling it.

Fellows, he is of the sort that make up the great throng of fourth-raters in the world to-day, drifting here and there; or settling down with a family on his hands and a little two-by-four job to eke out a bare living. And you fellows may as well face this fact: you've got to _stint_, if you're going to pull off a stunt. No stint, no stunt. Stinting is only another name for work and patience and economy combined, and it brings its inevitable fruit--Success!

_Read Acts 16:6-15._