| The Every Day of Life |
Chapter 22 |
Page 3 |
We are thus ever in last hours, because no hour is without its importance in its relation to other hours, and because no hour comes twice to us. Every hour is a last hour because we can never live it a second time. Then it is true, too, that any day or hour may really be our last. We are never sure of any to-morrow. One of the best measures and standards of living is to live each day as if it were the last we should live.
Supposing that one morning we were told that we should have but one day now before us: how would we pass the day? Would we not be very careful not to grieve God? Would we not be faithful in all duty and all tasks, which nothing should be left undone, nothing unfinished, when the day closed? Would we not bear ourselves very lovingly and gently toward all of us, that the last day’s memories might be kindly, without bitterness, or anything to cause regret?
“We should fill the hours with the sweetest things if we had but a day;
We should drink alone at the purest of springs in our own upward way;
We should love with a life-times love in an hour, if the hours are few;
We should rest, not for dreams, but for fresher power to be and to do.
We should guard our wayward or wearied wills by the clearest light;
We should keep our eyes on the heavenly hills if they lay in sight;
We should trample the pride and the discontent beneath our feet;
We should take whatever a good God sent with a trust complete.
We should waste no moment in weak regret if the day were but one,
If what we remember and what we forget went out with the sun.
We should be from our clamorous selves set free to work or to pray,
And to be what the Father would have us to be, if we had but a day.”
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