One Solitary Life

He was born in an obscure village,
The child of a peasant woman.
He grew up in yet another obscure village,
where He worked in a carpenter's shop until he was thirty.
Then for three years he was an itinerant preacher.

He never wrote a book.
He never held a public office.
He never had a family of His own.
He never owned a home.
He never went ot college.
He never traveled two hundred miles from the place where He was born.
He did none of those things one usually associates with greatness.
He had no credentials but Himself.

He was only thirty-tree when the tide of public opinion turned against Him.
His friends ran away. One of them denied Him;
another betrayed Him.
He went through the mockery of a trial.
He was nailed to a cross between two thieves, and
He was laid in a burrowed grace
through the kindness of a friend.

Twenty centuries have come and gone.
Today he is the centerpiece of the human race
and the leader of mankind's progress.
All the armies that ever marched,
All the navies that ever sailed,
All the parliaments that ever sat,
All the kings that ever reigned,

All the great things of this world put together
have not affected ths life of man upon this earth
as powerfully as that
One Solitary Life.

-James Allan Francis (adapted)
(From "The Gospels-Jesus and His Followers" by ABeka)