trivialities

• spending so much time and thought on

110:3.4I can­not but ob­serve that so many of you spend so much time and thought on mere tri­fles of liv­ing, while you al­most wholly over­look the more es­sen­tial re­al­i­ties of ev­er­last­ing im­port, those very ac­com­plish­ments which are con­cerned with the de­vel­op­ment of a more har­mo­nious work­ing agree­ment be­tween you and your Ad­justers. The great goal of hu­man ex­is­tence is to at­tune to the di­vin­ity of the in­dwelling Ad­juster; the great achieve­ment of mor­tal life is the at­tain­ment of a true and un­der­stand­ing con­se­cra­tion to the eter­nal aims of the di­vine spirit who waits and works within your mind. But a de­voted and de­ter­mined ef­fort to re­al­ize eter­nal des­tiny is wholly com­pat­i­ble with a light­hearted and joy­ous life and with a suc­cess­ful and hon­or­able ca­reer on earth. Co-op­er­a­tion with the Thought Ad­juster does not en­tail self-tor­ture, mock piety, or hyp­o­crit­i­cal and os­ten­ta­tious self-abase­ment; the ideal life is one of lov­ing ser­vice rather than an ex­is­tence of fear­ful ap­pre­hen­sion.

• Jesus wasted little time on

134:9.7Dur­ing this fi­nal pe­riod of Je­sus’ work at the boat­shop, he spent most of his time on the in­te­rior fin­ish­ing of some of the larger craft. He took great pains with all his hand­i­work and seemed to ex­pe­ri­ence the sat­is­fac­tion of hu­man achieve­ment when he had com­pleted a com­mend­able piece of work. Though he wasted lit­tle time upon tri­fles, he was a painstak­ing work­man when it came to the es­sen­tials of any given un­der­tak­ing.

• avoid loss of time through

163:4.54. Avoid loss of time through over­much so­cial vis­it­ing and other triv­i­al­i­ties which might de­tract from whole­hearted de­vo­tion to preach­ing the gospel.