One Solitary Life

For Sunday School we decided to ask the children how they wanted to be remembered - what for example in many years did they want written on their gravestones? At the end of this session this poem was read out. Its called the 'One Solitary Life' - I'm still trying to find out who wrote it.

Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman.He grew up in another village. He worked in a carpenter shop until
He was thirty.Then for three years He was an itinerant preacher.

He never owned a home. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. Henever had a family. He never went to college. He never put His foot inside a bigcity. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place He was born. He neverdid one of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but Himself.

While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him. His friendsran away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His enemies. He wentthrough the mockery of a trial. He was nailed upon a cross between two thieves.While He was dying, His executioners gambled for the only piece of property Hehad on earth – His coat. When He was dead, He was laid in a borrowed gravethrough the pity of a friend.

Nineteen long centuries have come and gone, and today He is a centerpiece of the human race and leader of the column of progress.

I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all thenavys that were ever built; all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings thatever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as has that ONE SOLITARY LIFE!