Drop Your Bucket Where You Are Series

This text is saying that wisdom is right in front of the man with

understanding, but the fool does not see it. He roams all over the world in

search of what is right under his nose. The fool is like the proverbial cow

who always thinks the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. The

wise man sees plenty of green grass in the field where he is. The fool can

be enthusiastic about what might be if only things were different, and he

was someplace else, or somebody else. He can dream of the opportunities

of the future in far off places, but the wise man sees the opportunities

before his eyes right where he is. Which of these two kinds of vision you

have will determine the success you make of your life. Sam Foss put i-

Seek not for fresher founts afar,

Just drop your bucket where you are.

We need to pray that God will give us the wisdom to drop our buckets

where we are, and fill them with the opportunities at our fingertips.

Enthusiasm which looks at great and distant ends, but neglects the means

to reach those ends, is the kind of zeal without knowledge that produces

the unrealistic visionary. Such a visionary has great ideals, but he does

little to fulfill God's will on earth, and change the real to fit the ideal. His

ideal is only theoretical and not practical. He is so busy dreaming of

things as they ought to be that he neglects doing anything about things as

they are. Dreaming of the pearly gates is neither Christian nor practical if it

leaves you blind to the gates of opportunity in front of your eyes. We

should pray frequently these words-Keep thou my feet: I do not ask to see

The distant scene; one step enough for me.

If we learn to see the wise and practical steps before us, we can be assured

that the end of the journey will hold great things for us. We are not saying

that great ambitions for the future, and high ideals are unnecessary. On

the contrary, they are absolutely essential to give the present meaning.

The point is, we must recognize that it is only as we take advantage of the

opportunities before our eyes that we can arrive at the distant goal.

Dr. Russell Conwell is famous for his story about the Pennsylvania

farmer who wanted to sell his farm and go to work for his cousin in

Canada. His cousin managed an oil company, and told him he could come

and work for him and make a lot of money, but he would have to learn all

about oil first. So the man read and studied hard, and finally wrote to his

cousin telling him he knew all about oil. He sold his farm and headed for

Canada. The man who bought the farm had a hard time getting his cattle

to drink out of the stream because of scum on the water. When he

investigated he discovered oil valued at a hundred million dollars. The

man who knew all about oil had lived over a lake of it for 23 years, but he

packed up and went to Canada in search of it. Had he paid more attention

to his present situation he could have had everything he dreamed of.

We have got to be enthusiastic about the present if we hope the future

to be pleasant. We have got to be enthusiastic about the near at hand if we

want to reach that which is far away. The present is a means to the future,

and the near is a means to the distance. Refuse the means and you lose the

end. Grasp the means and you gain the end. This principle is

demonstrated in many lives. For example, in Frank Bettger's How I raised

Myself From Failure To Success In Selling, we have this story. Bettger

was a baseball player on the Johnstown, Penn. team. He had high

ambitions as a player, but was fired from the team on the grounds that he

was lazy. He was shocked for he knew he was not lazy. He had just failed

to put his ideal and ambition into action. He finally got another chance to

play with the New Haven team, and he knew now he would have to make

his ideal practical by expressing it. He resolves that no one would ever call

him lazy again. He resolves to be the most enthusiastic player on the team.

Bettger did just that, and he wrote, "From the minute I appeared on the

field I acted like a man electrified. I acted as though I was alive with a

million batteries." The next day the newspaper account said, "This new