One Solitary Life

He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman.

He grew up in still another village, where he worked in a carpenter shop until he was 30.

Then for three years he was an itinerant preacher.

He never wrote a book.

He never held an office.

He never married or owned a home.

He didn’t go to college.

He never put his foot inside a big city.

He never traveled 200 miles from the place where he was born.

He did none of the things one usually associates with greatness.

He had no credentials by today’s standards.

He was only 33 when public opinion turned against him.

His friends ran away.

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 clothing, 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, the leader of mankind’s progress.

All the armies that ever marched,

All the navies that ever sailed,

All the parliaments that ever sat,

All the kings that ever reigned,

put together,

Have not affected the life of man upon earth as much as that…One Solitary Life

James Allen Francis