Take a Look At the Grave

"I have said to corruption, thou art my father; to the worm, thou art my mother, and my sister."—Job 17:14.

My soul, take a turn now and then to the grave. It will be profitable to look at the bed where thou art shortly to take up thy residence, before thou art sent there to remain. Nothing so profitable to allay all that heat and folly which keep men in a continual ferment, as a solemn view of "the house appointed for all living." To be sure, nothing can be more humbling than what Job here speaks of his relations: great men and nobles will not be very fond of the alliance; but in reality, all the other affinities of life are imaginary. Corruption is the common father of all. In this we all are formed; for corruption when dried, becomes the original dust it was before it was animated. And as corruption is the father, so the worm is both mother and sister; for here they burrow, and this is their proper element. But, my soul, while thou knowest these things, art thou living as one under the influence of them? Every man may say, as Job said, and call corruption his father, and the worm his mother and sister; but thousands while they say it, do not live as though they believed it. To say to corruption, "Thou art my father," in a scriptural sense, implies a heartfelt knowledge of a man's own corrupt, fallen, and sinful state; and under a sense of sin, and a consciousness of salvation by the Lord Jesus Christ, that soul hath attained a self-loathing and abhorrence, so as to look to corruption and the worms of the earth with complacency, as the - blessed asylum where will be deposited a vile body that shall harass the soul no more. Art thou, my soul, so looking at the grave? Dost thou so view it, as to love it for the blessed property contained in it? Precious Jesus! thou didst take pleasure in thy relationship with our nature, though thy holy body, untainted by sin, was liable to no corruption "yet, in the affinities of humanity, thou calledst thyself " a worm, and no man, a reproach of men, and despised of the people!" Oh, the transporting thought! to know, like Job, that thou my Kinsman-Redeemer liveth! And to know also, from a well-founded hope and assurance in thee, that "though after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold for myself, and not another for me!"

- Robert Hawker, The Poor Man's Morning and Evening Portions, October 29, Evening