January 7

Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life — Prov 4:23

Every one carries in himself the elements of his own happiness or wretchedness. It is the heart that gives color to our skies and tone to the music we hear. A badly kept heart makes pain for the life. A well–lived life stores away memories which make celestial music to cheer the declining years.

Norman McLeod said: “Nothing makes a man so contented as an experience gathered from a well–watched past.” We can insure full happiness only by living no day whose memory will make us ashamed or give us pain, when we sit in the eventide and recall it.

The time to secure a “well–watched past” is while the early days of life are fleeting. We never can change any yesterday. An unholy life yields a harvest of wretchedness in old age. But a life of obedience to God, of faithfulness to duty, of personal purity and uprightness, and of unselfish, Christ–like service, will make old age like a garden of fruit and flowers.