Whatever Your Hand Finds to Do, Do It With All of Your Might

Two men invented the telephone. One was a professional inventor; the other was a high school teacher, who worked in his spare time.  The reason we hold up Alexander Graham Bell today as the inventor of the telephone is because he beat Elisha Gray to the U. S. Patent office by two hours.

Ira Flatow writes that Elisha Gray’s sketches reveal that he had basically the same idea as Bell. However, as a professional inventor, he did not see his invention as a lucrative endeavor; it was merely a toy. Consequently, he dawdled.  Were Elisha Gray more diligent; perhaps, Don Ameche would have played him in a Hollywood motion picture, rather than Alexander Graham Bell.

It was Thomas Jefferson who wrote, “Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.” His words remind me of Prov. 14:23, “Hard work always pays off; mere talk puts no bread on the table” [THE MESSAGE]. Procrastination is not a good quality.

This does not merely apply to work. God calls for us to respond to him immediately. The judgment day is coming. We may not have tomorrow.

Furthermore, ignoring God’s teachings hurts us today. God calls us to do as He says—now—not because He wants to rob us of a good time, but so we can experience life to the fullest. He created us and He knows the greatest way to live. Any delay in following God’s instruction, means a delay in recovering from our own self-destruction.

The Machine Nobody Wanted

Chester Carlson was ecstatic. He had invented something that would make a difference. His idea worked! But then, according to Ira Flatow, author of the book, THEY ALL LAUGHED, each company, to whom he took he took his invention, rejected it outright. These included IBM, GE, and RCA.

Carlson stayed at it. He tinkered with his machine for five years, making it better. Still, no one was interested.

Finally, even Carlson’s wife was put out with it all. She divorced her husband, tired of seeing too little of him.

Then everything changed. He met a man named John Dessauer. Dessauer was with a small company in New York. Their interests paralleled those of Chester Carlson. The company bought a license to use Carlson’s patent. In time, Dessauer’s company changed its name—to Xerox.

It would still take over 15 years for Carlson’s machine—the photocopier—to catch on. Carlson ultimately would earn and give away a hundred million dollars.

Hebrews11 talks about a number of people who, like Carlson, could see the unseen. Unlike Carlson, they did not reap the reward in this lifetime, but they would in eternity. The writer of Hebrews, likewise, challenges us to put our faith in that which we cannot see.

Will we?