The years of our pilgrimage are threescore and ten. The generations crowd off the stage of time in swift succession. The sands of time run out in the hour glass of human life. Time is only the tick of the second hand in the clock of the ages. Some morning the senses will fail to resume business. Every door will be locked, every shutter drawn. Eye, ear, and hand will fail to respond. There will be no longer any medium by which to enter the temporal. An invisible hand has written “finished” across another human career and people will say, “this man's life is done.” 

But he has not ceased to be; he has merely finished with "time."  An aged Christian, with the snow of time on his head, may remind us that those points of earth with the whitest heads are the nearest to Heaven. Death is but the end of time and the beginning of eternity. For each of us there is an appointment for the end of our allotted time: “And it is appointed unto men once to die.” Hebrews 9:27.  

“For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told.” Psalm 90:9. Our prayer then to the Almighty should be, “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” Psalm 90:12.

We travel the road of this life without the knowledge of tomorrow and with no guarantee of the number of our days. Eternity’s appointment awaits us like a clock running down.  All our tomorrows are a great unknown to us, but it is by God’s providential care we are allotted the number of our days. “The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off and fly away.”  Psalm 90:10                    

Yet there is a bright hope for all those who put their trust in the Lord God of all eternity. Our sins and iniquities are covered by the Blood of Christ in the faith of His name. No fear then awaits in the unknown. A bright hope rests in the bosom of the redeemed. Life with all its sorrows, heartaches, and pain will be lost in the joy of God’s love, when the days of the years of our pilgrimage are done.

"Someday, God only knows just where and when, the wheels of mortal life shall all stand still.  And I shall go to dwell on Zion’s Hill."

As the lyrics of this hymn continue,  “Someday the dark clouds will be rifted, And all the night of gloom be past; And all life’s burdens will be lifted, The day of rest shall dawn at last.”  ("Zion's Hill," James A. Crutchfield, 1923)

What a glad day that will be.