One Solitary Life | RealClearReligion
▻https://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2023/12/22/one_solitary_life_1000723.html
Many years ago, the pastor of First Baptist Church of Los Angeles was Dr. James Allen Francis. Back in the 1920s, he wrote a beautiful passage called, “One Solitary Life.” (Note: Different variations of this short essay have shown up in slightly different variations, often attributed to “Anonymous.”)
Said Francis: “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 home. He didn’t go to college. He never visited a big city. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place He was born. He did none of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but Himself.
“He was only 33 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 He was dying, His executioners gambled for His garments, 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, and today He is the central figure of the human race.
“All of the armies that ever marched, all of the navies that ever sailed, all of the parliaments that ever sat, all of the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as that one solitary life.”
