The Testimony of Time

The glitter and dazzle of newly erected skyscrapers,
How they evoke our captivated attention;
But, behold, the edifices of yesterday,
How blight has rendered them unsightly and sore.
Presidents come, presidents go;
A dynasty fall for another to rise;
An economy strong, an economy ailing;
Corporations flourish and corporations collapse.
The great accomplishments of man
Parade and flaunt his wisdom and culture;
But as the process of time claims its victims,
All the vauntings of man are reduced to vanity.
Morning see the grass flourishing,
But evenings come to behold them withering;
That which is fading in ignominy
Is that which once blossomed so splendidly.
Never is the ravages of time more telling
Than in the span of the life of man himself.
Who in the glorious prime of his life is so oblivious
That he is born only to die.
Amid all the putrefaction and decay,
There are some things that tend to endure
And they seem to defy the onslaught of time;
Yet they too will finally succumb.
The mountains and hills, the rivers and oceans,
The firmament above that canopies earth below;
The sun which sets but will blaze again;
The celestial bodies that faithfully scintillate
Night after night:
These are silent and perpetual witnesses
To bear the lucid testimony of history;
Which humbles and humiliates the best of man
But ascribes worship to the Potentate of time
The fresh dew at the breaking of dawn,
The rise and ebb of the tides,
The circuits of the seasonal winds:
They proclaim the great Designer as the Sustainer.
Hearken, therefore, to the sermon preached by time:
Our days are numbered indeed;
Labour and sorrows would soon have their toll,
For soon our life is cut off and we would fly away.
O, why doth mortal man pretend?
And take refuge under his pride, wealth and fame;
When time is but a tribunal of the Almighty
To vindicate His judgment and mete out His justice.
Consider, O man, the trails of time,
Escape thou from its sweeping fleet?
Return, thou, therefore unto Thy Creator
And be thou satisfied early with His mercy.
He watches the traversing of a thousand years,
To Him it is as a watch in the night;
For at a point in eternity He had ordained time to serve
Him;
Therefore He is not bound nor fettered by its
dimensions.
Every second that ticks away,
Warns urgently of the transience of life,
Foretelling of death and the eternity that looms ahead,
Prescribing earnestly the mercies of the Ancient of
Days.
Bring it again to mind, O ye transgressors:
Remember the former things of old,
For He is GOD, and there is none else;
He is GOD, and there is none like Him.
Declaring the end from the beginning,
From the ancient times the things that are not yet done;
Saying, My counsel shall stand,
And I will do all My pleasure.
“For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ:
for it is the power of God unto salvation to
everyone that believeth…”
(Romans 1:16a)
“Jesus said unto her, I am the Resurrection, and
the Life: he that believeth in Me, though he were
dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and
believeth in Me shall never die. Believest thou
this?”
(John 11:25,26)