For all who have experienced the new birth; one day the thread of life will break and home you will be. It will be joy unspeakable, beyond anything your human vocabulary could ever express.

We are examples for others who are watching our lives, either good examples or bad, stepping stones or stumbling blocks, either wreckers or bridge builders. Many years ago I read a little poem about an old man who was really a “bridge builder.” I’m sorry I don’t know his name now, but his message lives on in my heart. Let me share it with you:

An old man going on a lone highway

Came in the evening cold and grey,

To a chasm yawning both deep and wide.

The old man crossed in the twilight dim;

That swollen stream was naught to him.

But he stopped when safe on the other side

And built a bridge to span the tide.

“Old man,” said a fellow traveler near,

“You are wasting your time in labor here;

Your journey will end with the closing day,

You never again will pass this way.

You’ve crossed the chasm deep and wide

Why build you this bridge at eventide?”

The laborer lifter his old grey head;

“Good friend, in the way I have come,” he said,

There followeth after me today

A youth whose feet must pass this way.

The chasm which has been naught to me,

To that fair youth may a pitfall be.

He too must cross in the twilight dim;

“Good friend, I’m building this bridge for him!”