The Hands of Time

History has been crowded with people who “almost” succeeded. When I was a young man just starting in the grocery business, Kroger was a popular and a very successful chain of grocery stores. Mr. Kroger and his associate, a man named Scovanner, met in the back room of a little roadside grocery store and drew straws to determine who should run the store and who should haul the produce. Scovanner made the choice which led him to enter the trucking business. He missed wealth and fame by a straw.

In Acts 26:28 you will find the story of a man named Agrippa. The last words recorded of this man’s life were, “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.” Whether Agrippa spoke in scorn or was seriously considering becoming a Christian we will never know in this world. But we do know that he had the opportunity to gain eternal life and passed it by. It reminds me of the words of Christ, “What shall it profit a man if he gain the world and lose his soul?”

Every day we make choices that have eternal consequences. The door of time opens in only one direction; it opens toward the future. You cannot go back and change yesterday. “The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on. Not all your piety nor wit can lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all your tears wash out one word of it.”

Paul Graham