“I’m tired. I’ve done enough. I guess I’ll stop work right here, and rest awhile.” That was what the river said, as it hurried on to join the sea. And so the river merely poured into the ocean the water it already contained, and gathered up no more from the upland fields and the lowland valleys. It wasn’t many days, as you may well imagine, before the river was entirely dry. Indeed, there was no longer any river at all. When the river ceased getting fresh water, that was an end of it.
“I’m tired. I’ve surely done enough.” That was what the tree said. “I’m tall enough. I have enough leaves and enough branches. Guess I’ll stop work.” So the tree sent out no more buds and no more leaves, and made no new layer of bark, and called down to the roots that they need not send up any more sap. But any of you children that know about a tree can guess what happened. As soon as the tree stopped growing, it began to die. First the top withered, then the branches fell off, and the trunk became hollow, and at last the storm blew it over.
“I’m tired. I guess I have done enough.” What if the great sun in the sky should say that? It might say it, if it followed the example of some children I know. Do you think that all the heat of all the summers the world has known would warm you, then, during the coming summer? No; God knows that to keep the world warm his sun must send out fresh rays all the time without a moment’s pause.
And that is why, children, the older folks are always urging you to begin some new thing for Christ. It is because when we cease to take up fresh work, and cease to use the powers and the life God has given us, those powers rapidly pass away, and the life changes to death, just as it would in the case of the river and the tree and the sun, if they decided that they had done enough, and must stop.