Facing difficult duties can be fearful, but it is dangerous to not do so, even deadly. It is better to be fearful yet faithful than foolish. We are never excused from duty because it is difficult or dangerous. The only safe place is the center of God’s will. J. R. Miller said it well when he wrote the following:
“The only safe way in life’s thronging field—is straight on in the path of duty. He who falters and hesitates even for one instant, is trodden down by the marching hosts behind him. No danger of the battle is so great—as that of halting and trying to turn backward.
The same is true in all the paths of life. No duty, however hard and perilous, should be feared one-half so much as failure in the duty. People sometimes shrink from responsibility, saying they dare not accept it because it is so great. But in shrinking from duty—they are really encountering a far more serious condition than that which they evade. It is a great deal easier to do that which God gives us to do, no matter how hard it is—than to face the responsibility of not doing it. We have abundant assurance that we shall receive all the strength we need to perform any duty God allots to us; but if we fall out of the line of obedience, and refuse to do anything which we ought to do, we find ourselves at once out of harmony with God’s law and God’s providence, and cannot escape the consequences of our failure.
So it is always in the end easier and infinitely safer to do our duty, whatever it may involve of cost or peril, than not to do it. To drop out of the ranks in life’s crowded pathway—is to lose all. To neglect opportunities, is to throw away honors and crowns.”
