Come, labor on!

Come, labor on.

Who dares stand idle on the harvest plain

while all around us waves the golden grain?

And to each servant does the Master say,

"Go work today."

Come, labor on.

The enemy is watching night and day,

to sow the tares, to snatch the seed away;

while we in sleep our duty have forgot,

he slumbers not.

Come, labor on.

Away with gloomy doubts and faithless fear!

No arm so weak but may do service here:

by feeblest agents may our God fulfill

His righteous will.

Come, labor on.

Claim the high calling angels cannot share:

to young and old the gospel gladness bear.

Redeem the time its hours so swiftly fly

the night draws nigh.

Come, labor on.

No time for rest, till glows the western sky,

till the long shadows o'er our pathway lie

and a glad sound comes with the setting sun:

"Servants, well done."

Jane L. Borthwick (b. Edinburgh, Scotland, 1813; d. Edinburgh, 1897) wrote this text and published it in her Thoughts for Thoughtful Hours (1859) in seven, six-line stanzas. Borthwick revised the text into its present five-line form and published that version in her Thoughts for Thoughtful Hours of 1863.

One Sunday morning in the first years of my Christian life, this hymn, sung to the tune called Ora Labora, moved me very deeply, to tears actually, as I sang it with the congregation in the small neighborhood Episcopal church of Saint Andrew in North Portland. It was possibly around this time of the year, late summer. I have never forgotten that day, nor this hymn which I have memorised. I still quietly sing it whenever I remember that experience, which confirmed the call that God has on my life. Today I remember both, as I meditate on the word, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8) and gratefully reflect that I feel that call no less now than when I first received it. God is faithful.