This poem below of Longfellow is so pertinent today and every day.
I look at what he is teaching and know he is right on.
Life is real and that is why we need Jesus.
Life is earnest and it takes all that is within us to keep our eyes on the eternal life with God. We are here for a season and we must choose to make the best of it by eternal standards, not cultural standards. Read on and choose for yourself. May God bless you this day and every day.


"Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Find us farther than today.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting
And our hearts though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled dreams, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead past bury its dead!
Act, act in the living present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us , then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow