Failure and Success: Our Dowry of Everlastingness

As for man, his days are like grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourishes. For the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more. But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him, and His righteousness to children's children.—Psalm 103:15-17

We who follow Christ are men and women of eternity. We must put no confidence in the passing scenes of the disappearing world. We must resist every attempt of Satan to palm off upon us the values that belong to mortality. Nothing less than forever is long enough for us. We view with amused sadness the frenetic scramble of the world to gain a brief moment in the sun. 'The book of the month,' for instance, has a strange sound to one who has dwelt with God and taken his values from the Ancient of Days. 'The man of the year' cannot impress those men and women who are making their plans for that long eternity when days and years have passed away and time is no more.

The church must claim again her ancient dowry of everlastingness. She must begin again to deal with ages and millenniums rather than with days and years. She must not count numbers but test foundations. She must work for permanence rather than for appearance. Her children must seek those enduring things that have been touched with immortality. The shallow brook of popular religion chatters on its nervous way and thinks the ocean too quiet and dull because it lies deep in its mighty bed and is unaffected by the latest shower. The Next Chapter After the Last, 9.

"Oh Lord, remind me constantly of this eternal perspective. Surely the temptation to seek the fleeting 'success' of the world (and the church!) would fade if I kept this always before me. Amen."