It was Titus Vespasian who lamented one evening that he had lost a day, because of that day he could remember no good action.

Have we not lost many of our days? What if all of those days should be brought against us at the time of accounting? What will our record be when the books are opened? It’s a sobering thought, is it not?

The words of T.S. Eliot, from the “Chorus From The Rock” might be taken with terrible seriousness as the epitaph for our present society:

A cry from the North, from the West and from the South

Whence thousand travel daily to the time-kept City;

Where My Word is unspoken,

In the land of lobelias* and tennis flannels

The rabbit shall burrow and the thorn revisit,

The nettle shall flourish on the gravel court,

And the wind shall say; “Here were decent godless people:

Their only monument the asphalt road

And a thousand golf balls.”

How, do you suppose, will we be remembered? In the ancient city of Joppa a disciple of the Lord died. The inspired record says: “She was full of good works and acts of charity.” Dorcas apparently had no lost days. What a way to be remembered!

In 1918, William M. Golden made a resolve it would be well for us to follow:

Each day I’ll do a golden deed

By helping those who are in need;

My life on earth is but a span,

And so I’ll do the best I can.

The Bible calls upon each of us to be “redeeming the time” so that there are no lost days.

• John Gipson, Searcy, Arkansas

* Here: the Lobelia plant used for medicinal use to cure certain ailments and to overcome addictions.