Detached Thoughts by Bettie Coombs

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 18, 1872

Detached Thoughts.

By Bettie Coombs

It is a great thing to live. We may well ask ourselves for what purpose we were created. Is it to waste the precious time God in his mercy has given us in decorating these poor, frail and decaying bodies, and reveling amid scenes of festivity and mirth? Observe a company of fashionable ladies together, and about all that is discussed is the fashions and other foolish topics of the day. Religion is not mentioned once. It may well be said, “Pride hath budded.”

Oh! that the world could realize their real lost condition in spending such unprofitable lives. Verily this is not our legitimate work upon earth. Each of us has a work to do, which if we fail to perform, the sin of omission will lie at our door, and though another may have brought the desired result, yet it cannot remove the guilt of that sin from our soul.

Whatever our past life has been, it cannot be recalled. We should not give up in despondency and vain regrets, but strive to improve each passing moment. We may talk of what we are going to do in the future, the present alone is ours; for death may steal upon us ere we are aware, touch us with his icy fingers and lay us away in the silent tomb; and each day that our life is spared we should see something done for the good of the cause and spread of God’s holy truth.

Sin hath made desolate the beautiful world fresh from the hand of the Creator, and brought death, misery and degradation upon the whole human race; and now we should try to make amends, so far as we can, for the past, in living lives of holiness to God, that we may be inhabitants of the bright, sinless world above.

How few of us estimate the love God has for his people in “giving his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him might not perish, but have everlasting life.” We read his love for us in the story of the cross; we see it in the Man of Sorrows who was acquainted with grief as he hangs upon the accursed tree, bleeding and dying for lost and ruined man; we hear it in that dying groan which rent the rocks and shook the earth, when he bore our sins in his own body on the shameful tree; and oh! the saints will see it with glorified eyes in the bliss-inspiring scenery of the New Jerusalem.

How many bright and beautiful things cluster around the world, Heaven. Here our pleasures fail, our joys wither, our hopes die, our prospects, even the most beautiful and bright, are overcast by the shadows of disappointment. There our joys shall never wither, our pleasures never fail, nor hope deferred make sick the heart. In Heaven’s pure day there shall be no death or sickness, tears shall never flow; sorrow and care will be unknown. The flowers of Eden will bloom on eternally. There the rainbow fades not, and its light will repose in golden glory on the bowers of Paradise.

There are sights of beauty for the eye, and sounds of sweetest melody for the ear; while over all is spread the charm of unfading loveliness. There the saint will wear a massy crown, and dwell in stately palaces. Through the streets of the New Jerusalem will incessantly flow a river of gladness upon whose banks the happy inmates dwell, while their grateful aspirations ever rise, and their ceaseless hallelujahs ever roll.

“That clime is not like this dull clime of ours; All, all is brightness there; A sweeter influence breathes around its flowers, And a far milder air. That sky is not like this sad sky of ours, Tinged with earth’s change and care; No shadow dims, no rain-cloud lowers— No broken sunshine there, One everlasting stretch of azure pours Its stainless splendor o’er those sinless shores.”

BETTIE COOMBS.

Hardin Co., Ky.