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Title: The Future
Author: Jared Barhite [
More Titles by Barhite]
I know not what the future
May have in store for me,
I only know that God is God
And He may trusted be.
The past with all its pleasure
And all its sorrow too,
Has been but a probation
To prove me false or true.
If in my earthly mission
No progress has been made
Toward a higher spirit--
No growth of soul displayed--
Then dark, sad, and foreboding
The future must appear,
The soul must shrink in terror
When death's hour draweth near.
If in the past no brother
Has felt my outstretched hand,
To aid him on his pilgrimage
Toward a better land,
No word of mine brought solace
To a weary careworn soul;
No hand of mine has pointed
To the Christian's heavenly goal;
No thought, or word, or action
To lead to better life;
No balm to heal deep anguish;
No anodyne for strife;
Then shall I hear the sentence,
"You did it not to me,"
Come from the sacred Teacher
Who taught in Gallilee.
If I have wronged my brother,
In action or in thought;
Have forced him into sorrow,
Or counted him as naught,
Have borne false witness of him
Or robbed him of his peace;
Unjustly taken from him
Or hindered his increase,
The words of condemnation,
"You did it unto me,"
Will fill my soul with terror,
Distress, and misery.
My soul has wronged no being
Of just and honest part;
But on this sole reliance
It would not dare depart.
Not in its own weak merit,
Not in itself alone,
But in the great redemption
Of Him who did atone
For man, and bid him enter,
The gates of joy and rest,
Through faith, and prayer, and penitence,
Upon a Savior's breast.
I shrink not at the future
Whatever it may be,
But joy in full assurance
Of faith's expectancy.
* * * * *
Let me pass away when my work is done,
Like a cloudless day whose setting sun
Leaves a smile on the evening sky;
Let this transient clay when deprived of breath,
With the earth yet stay, it alone knows death,
Myself must live on and cannot die.
[The end]
Jared Barhite's poem: Future
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