Minute Meditations

A friend once handed us a card with the following message printed on it. ”You’ll go thundering down in history like an extra gallon of water down Niagara Falls.”

We have never known a world that did not contain us and everything we are saying and doing seems so terribly important it is hard for us to imagine a world without us. It is possible to get so wrapped up in our own little circle that the truly important things of life are completely out of perspective. When we consider that extra gallon water over the falls, we laugh at its complete insignificance and yet most of the people who lived one hundred years ago have had just that much impact upon history.

We can do one of three things. One, we can decide to be just another gallon and fall unnoticed and mingle with the turbulent rapids of the world and end in oblivion. Two, we can decide that we want to make some kind of impression in this present evil world and give all our time and energies in trying to make a name for ourselves in the Who’s Who of today. To do this will require relentless dedication, knowing the right people and being in the right place at the right time. When and if we accomplish our goal of becoming, somebody, what will we have when we get there? The praise of man? Yes, perhaps, but the world is fickle and the heroes of today are forgotten tomorrow. If we should be so fortunate as to make a real mark in history what good will it do us? A few lines of type in the encyclopedia, perhaps a whole page, but what else? David commented on this saying ”the wise men die, likewise the fool and the brutish person perish, and leave their wealth to others. Their inward thought is, that their houses shall continue for ever, and their dwelling places to all generations; they call their lands after their own names. Nevertheless man being, in honour abideth not; for he is like the beasts that perish.”

The third alternative is to forget about thundering down in the history of man and devote our energies in getting our name recorded in God’s book of life. This too, requires relentless dedication, it requires knowing the right people (Jesus, Moses, Daniel, Peter, Paul, etc.) and it requires being in the right place at the right time. (Sunday school, meeting, lectures, and Bible Classes) . We won’t be famous and our neighbors will have little to praise us about, but this won’t concern us if we have our names written in God’s book of remembrance for then we won’t go thundering down in history at all; we will be immortal saints with an unending future.

How much better it is to have a part in a never ending future than in a dead past. Instead of being an extra gallon of water over Niagara Falls, we will be part of that ”pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.”

It’s as plain as one, two, three. One is to die as the fool. Two is to achieve worldly honor and then perish. Three is to live and reign forever with Christ. Each day we are telling God by the way we live which of these three alternatives we have chosen.