The Lord of Life

Happiness consists not in what you have but in what you are, not in what you can get but in what you can give. You can make this world a better place. You can enrich it and the lives of your fellows. You can be a source of healing and beauty, love and joy, justice and strength. You can increase the value and worth of all you touch. You can be such a being of light and life. Or you can choose the ways of darkness and death.

You can inflict hurt and horror, fear and despair, corruption and weakness. You can diminish and desecrate everything around you. You can be a Devouring Darkness. The Master well said, ‘if the light that is in you is turned to darkness, how great is that darkness!?’

We are all given five talents: a body, a mind, a spirit, a personality, and an endowment of time, to do with as we wish. If we invest these gifts wisely, in such a way as to honour the Lord of Life that bestowed such gifts upon us, then when the time of reckoning comes the Lord of Life may look favourably upon our service and invest yet more in us.

But if we are wicked and slothful stewards of the Lord’s investment; if we take his gifts and use them to destroy and diminish what already is – instead of building and enhancing, if we will gratuitously squander these gifts in the gratification of selfish amusements then when the reckoning comes the Lord of Life will seize and reclaim these gifts and no more will the souls of the wicked stain the Kingdom of the Living.

There are ways that seems wise to the wicked but the ends thereof are death; therefore should the wicked watch their step. Mark you well: you that would trade fire for gold, ancient forests for new money, who foolishly believe that oppression and injustice offer solid foundations whereon to build, who would with malice of forethought plunder the wealth of widows, orphans, and the elderly, you do grievously err. For the True Scales are in the hands of the Lord of Life and when all the tears, suffering, prayers and supplications are finally measured, all that you have and are will not be sufficient to balance the Scales. Thus will the Lord of Life call upon his abundance and Balance the Scales and all that you have and are will be consumed and those that knew you will be astonished for your place in the Kingdom of the Living will no more be found.