How many more years will I live?
By John Macduff. The king said to Barzillai, Come
over with me and stay with me in Jerusalem, and I will provide
for you. But Barzillai answered the king,
How many more years will I live that I should go up to Jerusalem
with the king? 2 Samuel chapter 19 verses 33
and 34. Pleasure, shaking her delights
in her hands, cries, come over with me. Mammon, clinking his
bags of gold, cries, come over with me. Ambition, pointing to
the hazy mountaintop and her coveted palace gleaming in the
sun, cries, come over with me. The day will come when these
things will yield no pleasure, when they shall be seen in their
true light. as the empty baubles of an hour. Oh, what though you
may have all that now caters to the pride of life, affluence,
prosperity, success in business, gaining the whole world? Are
you imperiling or impoverishing your immortal soul? But Barzillai
answered the king, How many more years will I live that I should
go up to Jerusalem with the king? What a solemn question for us
all amid the daily occurring proofs of our frailty and mortality. Oh, what a motto to continually
consider amid the wear and tear of life. Young man, with the
flash of young hope in your eye, life extending in an interminable
vista before you, ever pause on the enchanted highway and
put the solemn question to yourself. How many more years will I live?
Man of business in availing yourself of new openings in trade, accepting
new responsibilities and concerns, involving yourself in new entanglements. Have you stopped and probed yourself
with the question, how many more years will I live? Lover of pleasure,
plunging into the midst of foolish excitement, The whirl of intoxicating
gaiety, have you ever, in returning, jaded and weary and worn from
the heated ballroom, flung yourself on your pillow and sunk into
a feverish dream with the question haunting you? How many more years
will I live? Fruitless professor, who with
the mere form of godliness are yet destitute of every practical
Christian virtue. you who have lived a useless
life. Have you ever seriously pondered
the question, how many more years will I live? Show me, O Lord,
my life's end and the number of my days. Let me know how fleeting
my life is. You have made my days a mere
handbreadth. The span of my years is as nothing
before you. Each man's life is but a breath.
Psalm 39 verses 4 and 5. Teach us to number our days aright,
that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Psalm 90 verse 12.