LORD, Help Me To Be Diligent In My FATHER'S Business.

The wisest arithmetic!
(Alexander Smellie, "The Secret Place" 1907)

"Teach us to number our days aright, 
that we may gain a heart of wisdom!" 
Psalm 90:12

I number my days aright, 

when I feel their fewness. 

To the imagination of the young, 

life seems long. They catch no echo 

of "the roar of the waves of eternity, 

as they dash on the shores of time"--

so far away those shores appear to be. 

But the farther I advance in age, 

the more swiftly and imperceptibly 

the hours and weeks and years steal on. 

At the outset of the voyage, 

I mark my progress by the objects 

on the river-banks: trees, houses, 

towering hills. But, later, I have 

left the river, and am on 

the trackless sea; and the sea 

remorselessly impels me on. 

Soon I shall hear the cry, 

"Land ahead!" 

and my voyage of life will 

be finished and past!

I number my days aright, 

when I recall their uncertainty. 

Often they are abruptly broken, 

before they have attained their bound. 

"LORD spare the green--

and take the ripe," is a cry often 

sounded. But the cry is not always 

answered, and the child as well as 

the parent is laid in the churchyard grave.

Let me remember how 

brittle my years are--

and let me seize hold 

upon eternal realities 

which cannot be shaken.

I number my days aright, also, 

if I compare them with the 

unchangeableness of GOD. 

The world  watches the generations 

come and go. But GOD is without 

beginning, and the millenniums 

have left HIM unhurt by the tooth 

of time. How paltry my fourscore 

winters seem, in the light of HIS 

unending ages! 

Yes! but let me turn to HIM. 

Let me cast myself on 

the Everlasting Arms--

and the enduringness 

of my GOD will pass into 

my frailty and littleness.

And I number my days aright, 

if I think of them in relation 

to the limitless future. 

In one sense, I am easily robbed 

of them; in another sense, my years 

will come to no conclusion at all. 

As short as they are, they prelude 

an unimaginable, deathless existence.

Now I am laying the foundations 

of an eternal palace--

or of an eternal prison, 

from which I shall never leave. 

Now I am molding for myself 

a king's unfading crown--

or a criminal's inexorable chain. 

And since such momentous 

outcomes hang on the slender 

thread of my fleeting days, 

let me live as one about 

to migrate to the eternal world, 

and let me be diligent in my 

FATHER'S business.

This is, indeed, the wisest arithmetic!

  ~  ~  ~  ~

GraceGems has published J.R. Miller's helpful 1 page article, 
"Friendship".