The mortality of humanity hangs like long hair over my eyes, occasionally irritating my vision and then brushed aside. Yet with the coming of every sunset and fading away of my years, the strands of hair creeps over my eyes and allow me to stare into the inevitable - that I would one day perish like the rest and sleep. Permanence has become a blessed luxury, for in the face of dying, nothing appears to last. So much that seems to be so important, amounts to no more than vanity.

Do not our short lives make plain the supremacy of your eternity O God? and should not our short lives stare humbly into the realms of forever and be drawn towards You for You have set eternity in our hearts? Deep calls unto deep at the sound of your waterfalls and how endless are the depths of your mercies that they do not run dry for all eternity! and how sweet the taste of your love that makes our love look like stale water against the fresh waters of a mountain brook.

O Lord, whilst I was in the army, you have shown me death and the fragility of life and I have pondered anew your mercies. How the pride of youth misplaced my attentions and how You have desired to free us from it. More time, more time, there is always more time, my youth calls out, but flowers and grass that do not last your Word announces violently to me.

I remember Your love in the nights and in the mornings I am awakened by Your whispers yet still I have brushed it aside so often! How much does eternity weigh O Lord? Is it not more than 5 more minutes of slumber? Is it not more than the pride of a moment? How can mortality boast as so many mortal man do in the face of an eternity in worship to God! Can we not do anything unless You have given us grace to do so?

Pride of Youth, Boastfulness, idleness... they stare foolishly and crookedly in the face of men and their ways are ways of death, but Your ways are humility and self denial and they are life everlasting. Teach me O Lord Your ways and I will follow, give me Your grace that I may do what you teach so that I may live to glorify You forever.