What Ultimately Matters

 

Rejoice not because the spirits

Are subjected unto you,

Let it be known my brother and sister

This is nothing you can do.

 

What ultimately matters

Is where your name is written,

It ultimately matters to you and me

That it is written in heaven.

 

They had only just returned

From the mission of great success

And they were over their heads

Re their phenomenal success.

 

What a report they shared

Obviously reveling in the flesh

But the Lord Christ revealed to them

It was less than second best.

 

 

Rejoice not because the spirits

Are subjected unto you,

Let it be known my brother and sister

This is nothing we can do.

 

All honour is the Lord’s

And all glory belongs to him

And to attempt to share in his glory

Is accounted to us as sin.

 

You’d recall foolish King Herod

Who thought he was a god

And because he accepted such glory

His was a terrible fall.

 

His life was ended that day

And like so many that followed

In the dust of their so-called empire

They too were swallowed.

 

Napoleon the great and Hitler

But before these two, the Jews

That crucified the Lord Jesus Christ;

All came to their just due.

 

It behooves us therefore

To regard the words of the Christ,

For a born-again child of the Saviour

Is to acknowledge his sacrifice.

 

It matters not what we achieve

Or who is subjected to us,

What matters at the end of our sojourn

Is that we belong to Jesus.

 

 

Rejoice not because the spirits

Are subjected unto you,

Let it be known my brother and sister

This is nothing we can do.

 

What ultimately matters

Is where our name is written,

It ultimately matters to both you and me

That it is written in heaven.

 

Stewart Russell © September 29, 2024

 

None Without A Belief

 

 

An atheist and an agnostic

Stopped to talk one day

And the following, my friend,

Is what they had to say.

 

Asked the atheist of the agnostic

“What do you believe?”

“Only what I now know

And by nature, what I’ve received.”

 

“So, you don’t believe in God?”

The atheist prodded.

“I don’t know whether there is one.”

To this, the atheist applauded.

 

 

“Clearly there is none.”

The atheist advanced,

Figuring this was his opportunity

He took the offered chance.

 

“If there is a God,

He just couldn’t care,

Given all the evil around

And what we must bear.

 

If there is a God

And he actually cares,

Then he is powerless to change it.

Now that’s a real fear!

 

So, for me, there’s no God.

I can’t believe there is one

And the way you talk, Agnostic,

I am not alone.”

“Hold up just a minute!

I never said that.

Actually, I do not know we can know

Which one is fact.

 

It can’t be truly known

Whether there is a God or not.

In fact, I believe with all my heart

Christians have lost the plot.”

 

“So, you don’t believe in God?”

The atheist query again.

“Re a definitive position,” says the agnostic,

I respectfully abstain.

 

“So, what do you believe?”

It was the turn of the agnostic.

“Perhaps you are more assured than I

And more than a skeptic.”

 

“What is there to believe

Except all that one can see?

Nature is all that one can see

And nature is all there be.

 

 

I believe in nature,

An everyday teacher is she.

There’s nothing beyond Mother Nature,

That’s all we need to see.

 

You’re right, I am not a skeptic

And I have no need to be.

Mother Nature supplies the answers,

Any moron can see.

 

You don’t know what to believe

But I most surely do.

There is no God for me

And there is no God for you.”

 

“You can decide that for you

But not also for me.

I will make my own decisions

Based on what I see.

 

As an agnostic, I sit on the fence

And maybe one day I’ll change

But given your fickle presumptions,

I find you rather strange.

 

I’d rather be an agnostic

Than to be an atheist any day

And in my humble opinion,

You have lost your way."

  

Non-sensical in their beliefs

Both ridicule the Christian

For believing what Christians believe

And regarding the creation.

 

But the gravity of the situation

Goes much further than this

Since concerning what ultimately matters

They both are at risk.

 

For he that will come to God

Must first believe God exists

And neither the atheist nor the agnostic

Has come around to this.

 

 

None is without a belief

Everybody has one,

Whether in God or something else,

There is a belief of some form.

 

Atheists say there is no God

Agnostics posit we cannot know,

Christians believe it ultimately matters;

God’s Word tells us so.

 

Since all are wired to believe

Why not believe God’s Word?

If right now you are reading this

I trust you have concurred.

 

Stewart Russell © September 16, 2021