Magnificent Prayer #318

Make the most of every opportunity.

Colossians 4:5

While Helen Hunt Jackson [author of the nineteenth-century classic novel Ramona] lay upon her sickbed, she wrote a poem of penitent regret and petition for opportunity to retrieve the past with purposeful service.

It came too late, for in four days after she had written these lines, she was dead. The shuttle of time runs swiftly back and forth for us, let us busy ourselves weaving a life-fabric whose warp and woof are Love and Service for Him “who loved us and gave Himself for us.”

There is no time to waste in prayerless idleness or aimlessness.

NORMAN B. HARRISON

Pray About It: We all want to live a life with as few regrets as possible. When we come to our last day, we want to know that we’ve finished our race well. Read Miss Jackson’s poem and offer yourself to God today and ask Him to keep reminding you of “the brevity of our opportunity.”

The Brevity of Our Opportunity

Father, I scarcely dare to pray,

So clear I see, now it is done,

That I have wasted half my day,

And left my work but just begun.

So clear I see that things I thought

Were right or harmless were a sin;

So clear I see that I have sought,

Unconscious, selfish aims to win.

So clear I see that I have hurt

The souls I might have help’d to save,

That I have slothful been, inert,

Deaf to the class Thy leaders gave.

In outskirts of Thy Kingdom vast,

Father, the humblest spot give me;

Set me the lowliest task Thou hast,

Let me repentant, work for Thee.

HELEN HUNT JACKSON

Magnificent Prayer #318

From the book