One solitary life

One Solitary Life

Dr. James Allen Francis, 1926

He was born in an obscure village
The child of a peasant woman
He grew up in another village
Where he worked in a carpenter shop
Until he was thirty

Then for three years he was an itinerant preacher
He never wrote a book
He never held an office

He never had a family or owned a house
He didn’t go to college
He never visited a big city
He never travelled two hundred miles
From the place where he was born

He did none of the things
One usually associated with greatness
He had no credentials but himself

He was only thirty three,

When the tide of public opinion turned against Him
His friends ran away,
One of them denied him

He was turned over to his enemies
And went through the mockery of a trial

He was nailed to a cross between two thieves
While dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing,
The only property he had on earth.

When He was dead
He was laid in a borrowed grave
through the pity of a friend

Twenty centuries have come and gone

Today Jesus is the leader of mankind's progress
and the central figure of the human race

All the armies that have ever marched
All the navies that have ever sailed
All the parliaments that have ever sat
All the kings that ever reigned put together
Have not affected the life of mankind on earth
As much as that one solitary life!