By Russell F. Metcalfe, Jr. - Pastor, Atwater, Ohio
January 17, 1962
SMALL CHILDREN are lavish spenders of time. Each day to them is a complete unit. Yesterday is already dim and distant, and tomorrow is a long way off, so today is all that matters to a little child.
But, supposedly, maturity brings with it the ability to see the value of time, and the necessity of foresight. The current of time becomes perceptible, then increasingly intense and rapid. The questions of life, and its dimensions, must take into consideration the direction, if so it maybe called, of this current that moves us all so swiftly from birth to death and into the unknown beyond.
Whatever time may be for the philosopher, there can be no doubt that to the average man in the street, seeking for truth, time has a definite relationship to eternity. Ingrained in our very fiber, and revealed in the Bible, is the inescapable fact that what we do in the time we have to live on earth will be reflected when time as we know it shall have ceased. And yet we are all too of ten like small children, living for the today we can comprehend in part, and thinking not at all of the eternal tomorrow for which we can and must prepare.
Time is the fraction of a second it takes for the bullet to travel down the rifled grooves of a carbine and leave the muzzle. Then it is eternally beyond recall. Life on earth is a fraction small beyond comprehension compared with eternity; but oh, how everlastingly important the direction, both of the pointed rifle and of the eternity-bound life!
"We cannot get a truly comprehensive perspective on eternity, for we are finite. We cannot fully grasp what we cannot put into terms we can ultimately understand. We must try to define eternity with weak little illustrations of birds on endless journeys with grains .of sand, and of thousands and millions and billions of years. Our minds do not grasp what these mean. But we can think on eternity, prayerfully and scripturally until time becomes exceeding precious.
Thinking a while about eternal destiny will drive us to our knees and onto our feet, making the salvation of our unsaved friends and loved ones imperative, even desperate. Thinking a while on the brevity of life and the importance of its proper direction will make cross-bearing possible, and even bearable.
"O God, I do not fully grasp what eternity comprehends, but I know I shall shortly be proving its reality. Help me to live as a mature Christian should, ordering my life for eternity. Amen."