This old house!

(Mary Winslow, "Words of Loving Counsel and Sympathy")

"Dear friends, I urge you, as strangers and pilgrims in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul." 1 Peter 2:11

What a snare is this world to us! Thankfully, we are not here on this poor earth forever - better things await the Christian in a glorious hereafter. We are traveling homeward! This world is not our rest, because it is defiled - Jesus is preparing a better place for us. I feel like a bird standing between time and eternity, and ready to launch away at a moment's notice of the summons from above!

Time is quickly hastening on! This poor world is not worth a thought - all is passing away, but a glorious eternity awaits us! Oh, what must it be to be there!

The heart of Jesus is an ocean of love! O the joy of eternal communion with the Savior! He is the Chief of ten thousand, and the altogether lovely one! Having Him, we have all things we can desire here, and a good hope of eternal life hereafter.

I would not be without this hope for millions of worlds! I feel that this old house is being taken down little and by little. I stand astonished, considering the storms and tempests that have assailed it, that it has continued so long. But I have a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens! And there, first of all, I shall meet with the Savior of poor sinners, even Jesus Christ, who suffered, bled, and died that I should live forever!

Let us then live like one whose home is not here in this wilderness, but who is traveling day by day to a better and more glorious inheritance above, which is to last through the countless ages of a vast and endless eternity!

"Live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear!" 1 Peter 1:17