It's Never Too Late to Change

Rev. Ernest O'Neill

There is that pathetic verse you remember in the famous poem by Robert Frost of "Two Roads" where he says, "Both roads that morning equally lay in leaves, no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept to the first for another day, but knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back".

It seems that that is Satanic, doesn't it? I mean it's true, but it's Satanic. So many of our lives drift along in that way. You might almost say, drain away in that way. "Oh, I kept to the first for another day, but knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back". And it's a shame that not only older people here but some of us who are younger, can get ourselves into that spot where we say, "Oh I've chosen this way and it's led to that way and it's led to that way and I really can't go back now." And it's the same truth that comes through in Auden's pessimism, "in headaches and in worry, vaguely life leaks away."

"In headaches and in worry vaguely life leaks away. And time will have his fancy tomorrow and today." Loved ones, that is a Satanic lie. That is Satanic untruth. The meaning of every springtime is the same. It's what Hopkins said, "There lives the dearest freshness deep down things." When you see the daffodils come up and the tulips come up, you realize there's something on this earth that is eternally renewing and fresh and resurrecting. It's the same in your life and mine. It's never too late to change.

You'll never go far down along a certain path that you can't decide today, "I'll change", and the reason is that each one of you is actually part of the Son of the God who made our world. Each one of you was made by Him. There's not one of you here this morning that wasn't made personally by Jesus. That's what the best book we have that tells us about what is beyond the world. It says, "all things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything (or anyone) made that was made." (John 1:3) Every one of you was made by Jesus.