One Day at a Time
Advent: Day 15: Sunday December 17, 2023
Amos 9:11-15
2 Thessalonians 2:1-3, 13-17
My book marker lies gently in the crease demarking the last two chapters of Amos. My eyes move slowly over verses that both reveal and conceal the world which provoked him to prophesy more than two millennia ago. Looking up I take in televised images that transport me to that same part of the world only now in 21st Century dress. Scenes of burning vehicles and skeletonized buildings, the terribly destructive handiwork of our modern killing technology, reminding me that the more things change over time, the more the stay much the same This is no rumor of war upon which I look, no simulated war game which so many find entertaining. Real people in Israel have been brutalized, assaulted, and deprived of that which all of us take for granted—a home, safety, and peace. The retributive campaign to extinguish Hamas, once and for all, throws all of us into a seemingly irreconcilable clash of world views that is taking its toll on so many of us who share common political cause and spiritual ancestry.
Could these days in which we witness terror, genocidal rallying cries, impassioned pleas for cease-fires and humanitarian relief be the latest chapter in a promised land drama in which Jews, Moslems, and Christians keep trying to work out their convictions of God’s favor and promise? “On that day I will raise up the booth of David…I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel…and they shall never again be plucked up out of the land I have given them says the Lord Your God.” Amos couldn’t have been more specific in identifying a political dynasty as the fulfillment of God’s designs for this narrow strip of between the Mediterranean and the Jordan rift valley that remains the most sacred, coveted and contested real estate in the entire world. And this final oracle of his prophetic book couldn’t articulate more clearly his belief that the destiny of the people who call themselves Israel is inextricably tied to this land.
But is this day upon which I reflect, that day? For those Jews who call Israel their home, whose immediate ancestors poured themselves, body and soul, into its restoration after World War II and to its defense through decades of perpetual threat and recurring attack, the answer is “Yes.” For those Palestinians whose families were displaced by United Nations proclamation in refashioning Israel in the wake of global diaspora and Nazi genocide—the answer is ‘No,” or “Not yet,” or “Never.” No doubt both feel justified in their convictions. But to what end, and at what further cost are they willing to persist in their judgments of each other? Meanwhile we watch, we support, we send aid, and we pray. Could it be we have finally come to that day?
I can offer no solutions beyond what has heretofore defied diplomatic initiatives, negotiations, and treaties. For my own well being, however, I find myself listening to Paul’s admonition to his congregation in Thessalonica in offering them, and us, a perspective we need to take to heart. Cautioning his brothers and sisters in Christ who read signs of the end within the increasing hostilities that engulfed Jews and Romans in Judea and Galilee, he told them, “not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed…that the day of the Lord is already here.” Instead, he went on to say, “stand firm and hold fast to the traditions you were taught…” In reading his letter and contrasting his caution with Amos’ certainty, I find myself steered to to yet another biblical injunction, this one from Jesus himself:
“Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Sufficient today is the trouble thereof.” (Matthew 6:34)
Sufficient indeed! Since we can only live—that is fully live in, experience and have an influence on—one moment at a time, that being the present moment, it is in that time and that time alone that we can and therefore must devote our best attention. For it is then and only then that we may realize that we are not alone, but in the presence of the one whom the Bible speaks of as the great “I Am”, not the great “I Was” or “I Will Be.” And in that moment, indeed every moment when we are present with the One who is always present, we may begin to discover that neither the guilt and regrets of yesterday or the worries and anxieties of tomorrow are compelling enough to separate us from the One whose love for us is everlasting.
O let Thy word be light anew
to every nation’s life;
Unite us in Thy will, O Lord,
And end all sinful strife. Amen.
“Break Forth, O Living Light of God,” by Frank von Christerson
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The Blessing and Curse of Knowing
Advent: Day 16: Monday December 18, 2023
Genesis 3:8-15 (16-24)
It was with some surprise that I stumbled on this passage from Genesis 3 among the lectionary readings for Advent. It doesn’t share the customary Advent themes of hope, expectancy, and watchfulness, nor the prophetic urgencies of prophets like Amos or apostles like Paul or John. In fact, it seems to belong more to the beginning of the Bible’s human-Divine drama than its culmination. Yet I welcome it among the Advent meditations, because it is, in my judgment, one of the most important and thought-provoking passages in the entire body of scripture.
The story is so old and familiar we rarely take time to unpack its nuances. Two humans command our attention, perhaps the first of our kind or symbolic representatives of our kind. Their names point etymologically to types rather than individuals, adam (human) being a play on the Hebrew adamah (dirt), out of which the human was fashioned by the Lord; and isha (woman) derived from the ish (man) in the Deity’s sculpting. Nothing Darwinian here to be sure. Yet, as every teenage reader quickly observes, there must have been other humans about, since Cain was fearful of them after murdering his brother, and ultimately secures a wife from among them.
More intriguing, however, is the role of the tree placed squarely, like an attractive nuisance, in the garden, an inevitable snare to the childlike humans who find it impossible to resist. Why would God have placed it within such easy reach of these first people? Was the Deity testing them? An omniscient God wouldn’t require such a test, nor be prompted to wonder where the humans were hiding or how they had discovered their own nakedness. Such details may confound us, viewing them as we must through lenses shaped by our more expansive world view, not that of writers living on a planet that was a flat, four-cornered pedestal standing on four pillars still and quite young (6000 years young when we tally up biblical dating). It is far better that we take this story at face value—mythic as it is—without trying to extrapolate from it what we want it to explain or confirm, crafted as it was by minds who lacked the benefit of our scientifically-informed understandings of geography, astronomy, and cosmic time.
Aside from our trying to get behind God’s motives, however, is the puzzlement of the tree itself. The writer describes it as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which would seem far less foreboding than if it were the tree of evil or the tree of death. It took a talking lizard—my best description of a snake equipped with legs that God would later remove—to truthfully inform them that they wouldn’t die if they ate of its fruit. They would, however, become aware of things that you and I have to deal with every day: sexual difference, the work needed to survive, pain and social inequalities. In other words, in eating of the tree of knowledge they would begin to know life is at really is, at least for those of us who make it past the innocence and naïveté of childhood. And this is where the story really throws us a curve. Shouldn’t knowledge be a good thing? We equate it with power, the power to understand, to choose, and to develop the world in which we were placed by God. Why should this have been off limits to these first humans, or forbidden fruit for us today? No doubt these are questions that provoke our inquiring minds today more than they did our ancestral scripture writers.
The ironic frankness of the serpent’s explanation holds the key to unlocking this mystery: “God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Of all things, it is a serpent who spills the beans about something that is as troubling to us in our time as it was to our ancestors back then. Being like God. In fact, there are two other stories in Genesis that revisit this worry, one involving the Creator thwarting tower builders in Babel when they try to stand eye to eye with God in the heavens, and the other punishing the unholy alliance of heavenly beings (sons of God) and human women that produced fearsome giants (nephilim) who just happened to resemble their overly-large and intimidating Philistine neighbors. Putting limits on what people can or should know made a lot of sense to those who inhabited the biblical world. And these same reservations resonate with us too. Why else would our forays into the splitting and cloning of genes, the harnessing and weaponizing of nuclear energy, and our opening of that pandora’s box we call AI frighten us as they do? How much like God dare we become?
Some may prefer to read this story of paradise lost as a historical explanation of our origins, marking us as creatures forever stained by original sin. But it can also be understood as a rather profound, albeit simplistic, expression of the ongoing challenge we face in constructively and prudently using the knowledge we are so driven to acquire. For while knowledge certainly enhances our potential, its power depends on how and when we choose to apply it, for evil or for good, for the pursuit of self-interest or for the benefit of others. Knowing the difference, and acting in accord with that knowledge, is the beginning of Wisdom.
O Come Thou Wisdom from on high
and order all things far and nigh;
To us the path of knowledge show,
And cause us in her ways to go:
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to us O Israel! Amen.
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Every Birth a Miracle
Advent: Day 17: Tuesday December 19, 2023
Luke 1:1-25
Their names likely don’t stand out in our everyday catalogue of people we need to know and care about. But in biblical writ they share an amazing commonality. Sarah, the unnamed wife of Manoah, Hannah, and Elizabeth—all were women whom motherhood had passed by. All were up in years, one in fact of an age where child bearing was no longer possible. For each of them, however, the gift of new life was granted in what the Bible writers took to be a miraculous conception. And each of their offspring to come, male children named Isaac, Samson, Samuel and John, left a lasting mark on their families, their tribes, their nation and any of us who have recognized in them the voice or power of God.
Those who chart the evolution and historical spread of homo sapiens on this planet which has served as our one and only cosmic home now calculate that each of us is one among 117 billion men and women who have ever lived. As staggering as this number may seem, it is even more mind-boggling to realize that any one of us who draws breath today represents but one in fourteen of all the souls who were ever given birth by women. That still makes us part of a very large group of those currently alive, estimated to be around eight billion right now—and growing by the second. But it also means that from among the vast throng of those who have ever tread on the very earth we now traverse, or breathed the air we now breath, only a very few have ever been known beyond their immediate families. And only a minuscule portion of them have left a mark noteworthy of historical mention.
A prophet we call Isaiah of Babylon shared much the same impression of life’s anonymity when he wrote,
“All people are grass,
their constancy is like the flowers of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades…
but the word of our God will stand forever.” (Isaiah 40 excerpted)
Such a stark distillation of human life may appeal more to a biologist’s sensibility than to what we may care to accept, we who believe in a spark of divinity abiding in every man, woman and child. We prefer the image of humanity portrayed in the creation story of Genesis 2, where God breathes life into each of us, the literal indwelling of God’s spirit from the moment of our first breath-gulping cries to the final gasps of our passing. Now that’s inspiration, and far more edifying than us coming to be through random zygotic accident. Whether our lives prove to be long in years or stolen from us well before the three-score and ten we may hope to attain, it is uplifting to believe that we are animated by the very breath of God coursing through our lungs and, in turn, enervating every cell in our bodies. When seen this way, every human birth, whether to the unlikeliest of barren women in the Bible, or to the most prepared and eager mothers today—and even a young girl named Mary from an obscure Galilean village long ago—is miraculous.
Advent is a time set aside in the Church to call us to watchfulness and eager anticipation of the birth of Jesus. It is a feeling akin to what many of us can recall as we awaited the arrival of each of our children. For each birth not only symbolizes the love shared by husbands and wives, but confirms that the promise of Emmanuel, God with us, did not begin nor end in Bethlehem’s cattle stall, but is born anew each time we make room in our hearts for God’s love to abide.
“Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, Love divine;
Love was born at Christmas;
Star and angels gave the sign.” Amen.
—Christina G. Rosetti, 1930-1894
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Perpetual Surveillance
Advent: Day 18: Wednesday December 20, 2023
Titus 2:1-10
My years as a teacher and school administrator taught me a great many things about myself and the teenagers whom I was trying to help guide into adulthood. One such lesson seems to be inferred in the injunctions I read in the lectionary text from the apostolic letter named Titus: young people need our attention. Or more precisely, young people straddle two attention-getting impulses that drive what they do, how they dress and speak, and with whom they affiliate:
I want to be noticed by you and by these people;
I don’t want to be noticed by your or by those people.
Attention getting or, more properly, attention managing, steers us on our journey from childhood through adolescence, and, I would contend, through most of our lives. We want to be visible to and noticed by certain people, and we want to be invisible, even ignored, by certain others. Which individuals or groups fit into our “notice me” group, and which don’t seems to depend on a complex and unique blend of feelings, aspirations, fears and social habits upon which our securities, and insecurities, are fashioned.
What all of this means is that each of us is drawn into relations with others—some conscious and deliberate and others unconscious and accidental—in which we pattern ourselves after others and are, in turn copied by them. It could be that genetics may play a role in why and how this happens in each of our lives, but I suspect it begins the instant we start imprinting on those whom we see, hear, touch and rely upon from the moment of our birth. Over time instinctive copying and bonding becomes more conscious, and those whose attention we most need and seek out, as well as those whom we wish to avoid, reflect our intentions and priorities.
If what I’m saying has any truth to it, it would explain why role modeling is such a critically important link in the life-long process of our socialization and development. Whether we admit it or have any recognition of how this works, we unavoidably copy many of our behaviors, ideas, and values from those who serve as role models to us. And at the same time we unavoidably model behaviors, ideas, and values for others for whom we may, intentionally or accidentally, serve as a role model. What is inescapable is the influence we have on each other in setting examples, be they noble and exemplary or shameful and deplorable.
The letter to Titus enumerates what one 1st Century Christian writer viewed as essential traits for role models in the fledgling church. Directed at older men and women, younger persons and even those in slavery, it details the attitudes and conduct the writer deemed necessary to honor Christ and create a community in which order and respect prevailed. Reading that list today probably stirs within us a variety of responses, from revulsion at its hierarchical and chauvinistic age and gender preferences, to nostalgic longing for a time when social roles seemed more defined and accepted. I find myself tossing each of these reactions around as I sort through what I see in modern communities, what I once took for granted, and what I think might be ideal for those aspiring to live faithfully in the Body of Christ.
But the clearest message I take from the writer of Titus is this: each of us is a role model to someone else, and it is a role and responsibility we handle best when we accept what that means in the way we conduct ourselves each and every day. The serendipity of running across this text during this season where we wait in anticipation of one we call Lord, Savior, the Prince of Peace, or the King of Kings makes me realize how much the one we worship and adore at Christmas really is—or can be—the role model above all others for us to emulate. And if he is, what does that tell us about what kind of role modeling we need to be about for those who watch us in the comings and goings of family, neighborhood, work and worship? What does that mean for us in modeling the truth and love of God in those million and one encounters we have with those who are strangers to us in a world that God loved enough to fully join us in the human experience not only of life, but of death as well?
Have Thine own way, Lord, have Thine own way;
Thou art the potter, I am the clay.
Mold me and make me, after Thy will
While I am waiting, yielded and still. Amen.
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Promised or Assumed?
Advent: Day 19: Thursday December 21, 2023
2 Sam 7:1-17
There is much in life we take for granted, as well we should. Gravity, for instance, and that principle about how everything happens that we call causation. And then there’s death and taxes, about which Mr. Franklin is still quoted. I guess you could say these are facts of life that we rarely have to question because there are few, if any, exceptions. Even for those orbiting in space stations or preparing to revisit the moon, gravity holds true, albeit less forcefully than for us grounded in terra firma. And whether we go so far as to say everything happens for a reason, it is difficult not to believe that every effect has some cause behind it, even if we can’t always determine what it is.
For each of the two major religions who consider themselves “people of the Book” the belief in a chosen people and a promised land represent two promises—or should I say two assumptions—upon which most of our beliefs are constructed. Implied in a number of patriarchal stories and restated in poetic, prophetic, gospel and epistolary verse, it runs through the Bible as the subplot behind the covenantal theology upon which Jews and Christians understand both themselves and God. And in our reading today we see perhaps the clearest, most unconditional iteration of it in the entire Bible.
It is hard to overstate the lasting impact that a tribal king named David has had on the history and heritage we often refer to as Judeo-Christian. Portrayed as that courageous youth who slew a giant and who used both guile and piety to secure political power and establish a leadership dynasty in Israel, David is the forerunner of another mythical monarch, Arthur, who, like him, lives in legend as “the once and future king.” Diving into those scriptures from which we try to reconstruct his life and times, we discover in David a figure who is larger than life in his appetites, his spirituality, and his achievements.
Yet the same scriptures in which he is lionized as the Lord’s anointed (Hebrew mashiach), whose kingdom was so Divinely blessed and favored as to be established forever, pull no punches in asserting how weak and corrupt David was during his 40 year reign. Womanizer, adulterer, accessory to murder, he is portrayed as a master at acquiring both land and wealth in securing political power at the expense of those who opposed him, both in the Saulide clan whom he supplanted and within his own family. His machiavellian career likely inspired his most revered son, Solomon, to follow in his footsteps, the result being a reign of personal, economic and political excess which proved unsustainable to his heirs. Yet in spite of these failings, David’s reputation as Israel’s greatest king, the very son of God who ruled from the city of Zion he had created, only grew in both its mystic and its futuristic restoration .
Each Advent David is reawakened in the prophetic scriptures we read and in the many songs we sing in anticipation of the new David, the messiah-child, upon whom we wait. Yet Jesus’ nativity in the Bethlehem of David’s birth is, for most of us, not a reawakening of David in new dress, but the revealing of one anointed by God to recast our mistaken ideas about power and principle. This one upon whom we now wait, this Christ (christos being Greek for mashiach) was, in his life, neither king nor conqueror. He chose a different path, one which transformed the older covenantal promises of lands and election that had proved both futile and mistaken. And in their place he gave witness to God’s will and way through a life of sacrifice and service, forgiveness and justice. It is this one life, this solitary life which has become for us the very Word of God, one whose life and death turned ancestral promises of promised lands and chosen peoples into a new awakening to God’s grace and peace. It is for his Christ that we wait, and in Christ that God’s eternal promises are fulfilled.
Hail to the Lord’s Anointed Great David’s greater Son!
Hail to the time appointed, His reign on earth begun!
He comes to break oppression, to set the captive free;
To take away transgression, and rule in equity. Amen.
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Righteous or Good?
Advent: Day 20: Friday December 22, 2023
Galatians 3:1-14
What makes us righteous in the eyes of God? Jewish rabbis have noted that the scriptures present for us two ways in which we might answer this. One follows the pattern established by a certain Phinehas mentioned in the book of Numbers, chapter 25. During the latter days of the wilderness wanderings of the children of Israel, he demonstrated his zeal for God by driving a spear through an Israelite man in intimate embrace with a Midianite woman. The scripture writer declared that in his act of purging Israel of this ethnic pollution, Phinehas was “reckoned as righteous” by God. The other Israelite upon whom this reckoning fell was Abraham, whose righteousness was proven in his faithful obedience to God in moving his family from the temptations of Mesopotamia to the God-fearing sanctuaries of Canaan. Phinehas inspired an ethic of action, even violence in devotion to God. Abraham inspired an ethic of faithful obedience that demanded of him both personal sacrifice and even suffering.
Both of these ancestral figures have been archetypes for Jews and Christians striving to please God and secure God’s blessing. One involves procuring that favor through deliberate acts of correct conduct in accordance with God’s commands, particularly those given permanence in the Law (Torah). The other puts its trust in the believer’s acceptance of God’s benevolence, understood and received as a gracious gift from the Creator. Living by faith in God’s grace in the manner of Abraham, rather than through meticulous obedience to the Torah, as did Phinehas, was the key to salvation for Paul, no doubt the result of his blinding light conversion on the road to Damascus. Most of us brought up in Protestant churches view this faith vs works dichotomy as the litmus test that distinguishes our brand of the faith from that which Jews and Catholics emphasize. Admittedly such an us vs them reduction fails to properly capture the essence of any of these faith traditions. It does, however, point out an important difference among believers when it comes to living the righteous life. A rather well-known but overlooked biblical passage from the Christmas story brings home this point.
During our Advent and Christmas worship services we will hear the story of the birth of Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew. Unlike Luke’s account, Matthew turns a spotlight on Joseph of Nazareth, the father of Jesus, at least in a legal sense. Being engaged to be married to a young woman named Mary, he was faced with a difficult moral dilemma: what to do in the face of her pregnancy when he couldn’t have been the father. As a wronged party he had some pretty clear choices to make. He could marry her, divorce her, or even press charges against her for infidelity, which might provoke him to have her stoned in public stoning in compliance with God’s Torah. In a verse we often read over or ignore is found this short but telling description of Joseph (Mt. 1: 19)
“Joseph always did what was right…”
Other translations of the same text it say that Joseph “was always faithful to the law,” or “he was a righteous man,” or “he was a just man,” and even that “he was a good man.” I’ve often thought that Joseph’s decision to spare his young wife public shame or even death says a lot about his sense of righteousness before God. Had he done the right thing, the correct thing according to God’s law; had he done what he could have done to save his own name and reputation, he would have cast her aside. But instead, he chose not to do what was right, not to pursue that for which he was entitled. He did what was good, and compassionate, and caring, which tells us much about him and the nature of his faith. For he proved to be more like Abraham than Phinehas, and his choice I, and all Christians I suspect, would reckon as a righteous one. What we can only infer from our post-Christmas, post-Easter understanding of God, is how some of Joseph’s character and faith likely rubbed off on this son whom we consider the very embodiment of God’s word on earth.
Advent is a time for us to seek a higher righteousness than that which our laws and our sense of personal rights grant us. Advent is a time for us to think deeply about the righteousness that may dwell within us for which our words and actions bear tangible witness. And in that reckoning we could not do better than emulate this near-anonymous figure from the Bible named Joseph, the one who chose to do the good thing, the loving thing, the gracious thing rather than letting his rights get in the way of God’s incarnate Word coming to life in a child, the son of a builder named Joseph.
“Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art;
Thou my best thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.” Amen.
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Teach Us to Count our Days
Advent: Day 21— Saturday December 23, 2023
Psalm 90
The lectionary selection that has been speaking to me on this 21st day of Advent is a psalm with many memorable verses.
“Lord you have been our dwelling place in all generations…
For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past…
The days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty, if we are strong…
So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart.”
I find myself returning to it often, for it never fails to inspire in me that spiritual attitude that each of us needs when trying to make sense of the vicissitudes of life: perspective. Psalm 90 is an invitation for us to do more than count numbers, whether they be in the eons that measure a cosmos much older than any of us can fully grasp, or the far shorter spans of any of our lifetimes. It is appropriate to read this psalm in Advent with its Janus-like orientation pointing us in recollection to a past that saw the birth of the Christ child now more than two millennia ago, and to a future that we can’t number as much as anticipate, whether it be in hope or dread. I sense that the writer of this psalm had more than math in mind when asking God to teach us how to count our days. This is more than a chronological (from the Greek, chronos, or calendrical time) exercise in marking time. The psalmist’s petition strikes me as an in-depth appreciation of how we count, or weigh, the meaning or essence or fullness (kairos in Greek) of the days we have been granted life.
I’m not sure of the lasting import of the days of my own life, so many that I can neither count nor fully recall more than a handful. But if there be any wisdom to be gained from counting days, it will be be found in the lasting value of what we may have added or given to life, and the lasting value of what we have taken or learned from living. Did we contribute to the quality of life in our family as a child, or did we suck life out of them with our selfishness and petulant moods? Were we a positive influence in the schools we attended or did our teachers and peers view us as a high maintenance irritant that aggravated and frustrated them? Have we made a difference for good in the jobs we’ve worked, the neighborhoods we’ve lived, and the churches to which we have belonged? Or have we have lived for self above all else, treating the people who’ve crossed our path like objects to be manipulated or abused? There is much more than math at stake when we are entreated to count our days. It is a call for some serious searchings of the soul, and the for a self-appraisal of a life, that must be measured in qualitative, not quantitative judgment.
The Apostle Paul wrote several letters to his 1st Century Mediterranean congregations addressing their concerns about the end-times that some of them hoped would come in their lifetimes. But for me his most insightful instruction to them, and to us, when it comes to counting our days, remains what he offered to his brothers and sisters in the church in Galatia:
“…in the fullness of time, God sent his Son…”
(Galatians 4:4)
The word he used, pleroma, that we translate as fullness, carries with it the sense of completion and fulfillment, both underscoring the kairos of Christ’s incarnation rather than its chronos. The days Paul was counting had little to do with any particular numerical dates then in currency in the Greco-Roman world of his time. But they had everything to do with the existential, spiritual moment in which men and women might receive the Christ, as the transformative, grace-filled word of God. For he knew that it is in that moment that all of our days change from numbers we can count for, to lives that truly count .
“Before the hills in order stood or earth received her frame;
From everlasting Thou art God, to endless years the same.
A thousand ages in Thy sight are like an evening gone;
Short as the watch that ends the night before the rising sun.
Time, like an ever rolling stream bears all who breath away;
They fly forgotten as a dream dies at the opening day.
O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come;
Be Thou our guide while life shall last, and our eternal home.” Amen.
(Isaac Watts, 1674-1748)
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