The Glory of the Sunrise

The Glory of the Sunrise

By W.H. Wood

Prepared on September 1, 1946 for Oak Vale School opening on September 2, 1946

“The sun ariseth…” Psalm 104:22

The glory of the sunrise lies not in its beauty, but in the fact that it is a token of a new day which has been given to us. Going to bed is always an adventure.  We surrender our lives to the unknown, but when the morning comes we awake to a new day.

It means a new opportunity.  Yesterday, we compromised; today is ours to stand erect again.  Yesterday, we saw the work and accumulation of years go down in a crash for which we were not responsible.  Today, we are still in possession of that same power which enabled us to achieve and we have the courage to try all over again.  When a day is gone, it is gone forever.  There is no recovery of time which has been wasted.  The biographies of the great reveal that they were those who knew how to use time.  There was no idle time with Benjamin Franklin or Thomas A. Edison.  They knew the value of a day. To kill time is to murder opportunity.  Every day should yield its full fruitage, but when one is gone it can never be recovered.  But the sunrise offers a new day; another opportunity.  It is not a number of hours to be wasted on trivial things.  Possible the fate of our civilization will depend on what we do with the days that are ours now. 

We either master or days or the days master us.  “To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning.”  It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and labor of men.  Henry David Thoreau said:  “The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for intellectual exertion; only one in a hundred million to a poetic or divine life.”   Paul urged young Timothy to “lay hold on eternal life”.  He was expressing life in terms of quality, not alone of time.  This type of life is only possible for those who command the best of their days. 

Great days come in every life.  The great day for Moses dawned at the edge of the desert.  The great day for Isaiah came when he went to the temple to worship after the death of Uzziah.  Samuel’s great day came when he was a mere youth. Shakespeare said:  “There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune, omitted, all the voyage of their life is found in shallows and misery.” The difference between great men and ordinary men lies in the ability of the great to recognize the greatness of the day that is theirs.