Eternal Grace

Fanny Crosby wrote thousands of hymn texts.  Thirty or so of those are still commonly sung and familiar.  Many have faded into obscurity.  While they had a good life, now they are “dead”.  One of those is “Eternity” and is aptly named because while it has faded from the common scene of life its eternal value remains.  As it is with songs, so it is with people.  “Eternity” is a good hymn for the scenes of grace found in Genesis 36.  It may seem to be a chapter with little value; it is after all simply a genealogy of Esau, but it has been mightily used by the grace of God.

 What happens in a genealogy is that people are born and they die.  Genealogies cut out all the drama of life and reduce it to the basic facts of human existence; we are born and we die.  I have a friend who is a nationally known Bible teacher.  He was saved after reading Genesis 36.  The stark reality of birth and death, names briefly mentioned and forgotten, struck him to his very heart.  We are mortal in the flesh but eternal in our spirit.  Where will that eternal spirit dwell after the flesh has gone? 

Fanny Crosby captured this stark truth in “Eternity”.  The first verse reads, “Deep and grand in tones sublime, hear the passing bells of time, ring the dirge of moments dead,
golden hours whose joys are fled - still those bells of time we hear, tolling, tolling: Hark! the word: Eternity!”  All those descendants of Esau had some golden hours, they were kings of Edom, but in Scripture they only get a verse to cover their entire existence – then, eternity.  Fanny continues to capture the passing of time in her second verse, “In the rosy morning fair,
In the sultry noonday glare, in the dewy evening bright, in the silent hush of night —
still those bells of time we hear, tolling, tolling, loud and clear: Eternity!”

But eternity where?  Therein is the grace of God.  We can know where our eternity will be if we have trusted that grace of God offered to us in His only begotten Son our Lord, Jesus Christ.  John wrote in his first epistle, “He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son does not have life.”  Eternity with God in heaven is based on what we have done with His Son Jesus Christ.  Life is short, a mere verse, and then eternity.  God’s grace in Jesus Christ offers us eternity with Him.  Crosby concludes her hymn, “Precious word! if safe we stand on the Christian’s borderland trusting Him, whose loving smile lights and cheers us all the while — bells of time with joy we hear, tolling, tolling, sweet and clear: Eternity!”  Rejoice in God’s grace of eternal life and hope today.  

  The Friday Benediction

Until Monday, my friends, may the good God envelop you with His grace; may you prove the common confession of faith, “I believe in the holy Christian church and in the fellowship of the saints”, and may you be enriched with joy and hope as you exercise that confession this weekend.  Amen

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