And This, Too, Shall Pass

More than a century ago, Abraham Lincoln recounted a legend that suggests a searching of our pursuits, our surroundings, ourselves. A certain monarch, he said, “once ordered his wise men to invent him a sentence… which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words, ‘And this, too, shall pass away’…How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction! ‘And this, too, shall pass away.’ And yet, let us hope, it is quite not true. Let us hope, rather, that by the best cultivation of the physical world…around us, and the intellectual and moral world within us, we shall secure [that] which … shall not pass away.

Some things pass. Some thing endure. Sorrows and disappointments pass. So do long periods of preparation. In our minds we may place limits on how long we can put up with certain situations or difficulties. But if we can endure one hour, one day, we usually find we can continue. No man knows how much he can endure until he must. Strength and patience and ability increase with necessity.

Certain things sometimes seem exceedingly important—things we have set our hearts on and feel we must have—yet time passes, and what once compelled us, does so less urgently. Fashions pass. Success passes; and so, frequently, does failure. The struggle, the running pace, the grasping, the getting, and the gathering, the exhausting effort to keep up with others—these pass. The hurts and heartbreaks, the pain—these pass. Friends pass, loved ones; youth passes into age, and both into eternity.

But what must not, cannot pass, is life’s great purpose, the reason that the universe and men were made; and faith in God our Father, in our relationship to Him, in His reality and reachability; in His unfailing interest in us always—these do not pass. Nor does the peace that finally comes with faith, with sanity of values, with a quiet conscience, with knowing a goodness that is its own reward, and knowing that limitlessly beyond are life and loved ones, and an eternity of all that deeply matters most.

These do not pass.