The Home Circle | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 24, 1883

The Home Circle.

This world with all its beauty, its sunshine and its showers, Was made for highest duty, and not for idle hours.

Each leaflet has its mission, each blade of grass its place; Each life, spite of position, bears fruitage for the race.

Only one spring is sent us, to sow the golden grain; Only one summer lent us, to reap in joy or pain.

And autumn dawns not slowly; white hair too soon has come. We lay us with the lowly, and all life's work is done.

What matter if life's measure be long or short on earth, So we fulfill His pleasure, for which the soul had birth?

So we keep sunny ever, though clouds may dim our way, Making the darkest weather a bright, perpetual day.

A smile has Heaven within it, if hearts be warm and true, A sweet voice is akin it, and both are but His due.

Who spoke us into being, blest immortality? Where hoping turns to seeing, and faith to things that be.

No life but has its sorrow; tell it to God alone; Looking for golden morrow, keep ever near the throne. —Selected.