Presented by Brother Phil J. Croft,
King David Lodge No. 93,
West Vancouver, B.C.
Grand Lodge of BC & Yukon (Canada)
Pursuing the same metaphor, it might be said that the second great gift with which we are endowed at our birth is the gift of energy.
Healthy children simply bubble and boil with it (as we grandfathers know all too well!) and if it be true that, in the words of our ritual,
“labour is the lot of man”,
then it is also true that our God-given energy is the means whereby we accept that lot, and wield the Gavel of our allotted tasks in life.
To conserve the sources of our energy by right-living and temperate habits seems to me to be a duty implied, if not explicitly stated, by the charge concerning the “Common Gavel “.
As we pile on the years of our age, our energy becomes less overflowing, and sapped by normal fatigue, we become a set-up for one of the “Seven Deadly Sins” – Sloth, – or as we should now call it, Laziness, a tendency to procrastinate, to put off, or to neglect moral tasks which should go to the building of our character into
“a stately and superb Edifice, perfect in its parts and honorable to the builder.”
Say, we have a kindly impulse to write a letter to a distant or lonely relative or friend, whose spirits we know would be lifted by a message from us. But – oh, well, I’m a bit fagged this evening and there’s a very good program on the television.
Or, say again, there is a meeting of some organization to which we belong, at which some special knowledge we possess would be a valuable help to the committee if we did but attend the meeting as we should; but, oh well, it’s been a rough day at the office, and it’s not a very nice night out, and anyway I might get stuck with a job to do!
So, we let it go, and our reputation for dependability suffers! Which of us, alas, does not recall some good, kindly or helpful action which on first impulse we might have taken, but we have let time slip by, and the opportunity is lost.
The Gavel was in our grasp, but we did not wield it!
Truly, the road to Perdition is paved with good intentions.
“For the heart may conceive and the head devise; in vain, if the hand be not prompt to execute the Design”!