An Ever Rolling Stream

As the days race toward the end of the year, I have found myself singing softly so that no one will be disturbed a great old hymn written by Isaac Watts.  Written in 1719, it still stands as one of the oft sung hymns of the gathered church.  It is filled with words about time.  "O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come,..." it begins.  The fourth verse refers to "a thousand years"  and the fifth one has us singing, "Time, like an ever rolling streams, bears all who breathe away; they fly forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day."  While it may seem like a rather morbid song to some, how important it is that there remains a place which calls us to be in touch with our mortality as well as eternity which is what the last verse does as it speaks of "our eternal home."

 

Living with an awareness of numbered days is not a morbid thing, but a thing which can enable us to live wisely.  Some of the great spiritual writers call us to live mindful of our death.  To live knowing that we are only here for a brief season will bring us to a different place in our living than to live thinking that we will be here forever.  The Word of God is written in the context of time.  People's lives are numbered by the years and events are described in terms of the passing time. 

 

And, it is also true that the creation sounds the same message as we watch the sun moving across the sky, or count the rings in a fallen tree, or  observe the way everything changes with such order.  Nothing happens outside the context of time.  Time is eternal.  It was brought into being by the Creator and will continue even when the earthly clocks are replaced by the unfolding of an eternal and unending eternity.  God has put us here on this earth to experience everything between the time of our birth and the time of our death.  And, through the death of the Bethlehem child on the cross, He has provided a way for us to know the unbounded life which can only be known as eternity.