The truest help we can render an afflicted man is not to take his burden from him, but to call out his best strength that he may be able to bear it.”
–Phillips Brooks
“For Christian discipleship is not a soft job, a perpetual picnic, a sort of religious entertainment.”
–J. Stuart Holden
From time to time over the years I have heard the statement from students, “Let us have a free day.” I give them a look and usually say, “There’s no free day in life.” But in the recent weeks I have heard this several times. Is it just my students, or is it the times we live in, but do they really want a free day? I tell them that I can’t do it. I would be cheating their parents out of money. I would be cheating my employer. Then on top of it all I would be a poor steward of the time that God has given me to instruct them. Free day??!!
I’m not sure I know what they really mean when they say, “free day.” Does it mean that they don’t have to pay for lunch? Perhaps it means that they can lay their poor, tired, little heads down on the desk for a class period. I remember someone saying to me once, “Pay today or pay tomorrow, there is no free lunch.”. Another person said that if you don’t do things right, earn your way, you’ll pay the piper. They he would add, “I’m the piper.” I can remember those days spent in Basic Training. We had a certain amount of “training days”, weekends and holidays were not training days; I guess you could call them “free days.” Ha! We worked harder on those days than the training days. Those days were to strip and wax the barracks, and a couple were for KP duty.
The attitude is real however. I see it in action continually. Sometimes it comes out as apathy. Why work, I shouldn’t have to, is the common attitude of so many. Why study for a test, I can cheat, or the teacher will feel sorry for me and give me a grade. Part of that is the problem we are seeing now with young people claiming “entitlement.” Ptui on that!
Granted, in the Declaration of Independence ol’ Tom said that we have the right to “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.” What happiness was back then is entirely different than what it thought of happiness today. Happiness meant to find your place in life; to fulfill your God-given calling, no matter what you went through to achieve it. Today it means chips, a sofa, a free ride, and maybe some education (as long as they don’t have to study too much).
Here is a little assignment for you to do someday. I know you won’t do it now, but maybe one day it will come to mind again. Go through the Book of Proverbs and mark all the Scriptures dealing with work. There are many, and after that write down how many deal with the advantages of “free days.” In fact, there are some that imply what happens if a person takes “free days.” He is called a sluggard, a sloth, and a fool.
“A wise youth works hard all summer; a youth who sleeps away the hour of opportunity brings shame.”
–Proverbs 10:5 (NLT)