WHY I WEEP BEFORE I WRITE
Behold, I do not weep for poverty alone, for poverty is a wound that wealth may heal. I weep for the deeper wound, the wound that wealth cannot reach: the sudden death that cutteth a man down at the half of his days. There is no matured death; there is only the harvest in its season and the felling out of season. The thief of the nations is not chiefly the thief of money; he is the thief of years. He cometh not first for the purse; he cometh first for the days, knowing that when the days are stolen the purse is left to strangers.
THREE WITNESSES TO THE WOUND
Hear the three witnesses I set at the gate of this book. The first witness is Hosea: my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Behold, it is not for lack of gold that they are destroyed, nor for lack of weapons, nor for lack of bunkers; it is for lack of knowledge. They knew not the doctrine of the two hands; they reached for the left hand of riches and let the right hand of days fall, and so they were destroyed in the midst of their gathering.For I am persuaded that the doctrine of long life is not a small thing nor a side matter, but the very vessel of the blessing. A man may have the wine of the blessing poured for him, but if his vessel be cracked at the bottom-if his days be cut short-the wine runneth out upon the ground, and he dieth thirsty beside a broken cup. I write to mend the vessel. I write that the wine may be held, and drunk, and shared at the table of a full age. Weep with me first, then, that thou mayest rejoice with me last; for the night of weeping is short, but the morning of the long-lived seed cometh, and joy cometh in the morning.
THE TREASURE THAT OUTLIVETH THE MAN
Look upon the graveyards of the rich, and weep with me a little longer. There lie the builders of barns and the hoarders of harvests, and over every one of them the same word standeth written, though no mason carved it: the treasure outlived the man. He gathered, and another scattered; he laboured, and a stranger entereth into his labour; the house he built shelters a name not his own, and the gold he counted is counted now by hands he never blessed. Behold the bitterest sorrow under the sun, the sorrow that the LORD will not add to His blessing: that a man should spend his one life heaping a treasure he shall not live to enjoy.
This is the wound I write to heal: not that men are poor, but that men are short; not that the barns are empty, but that the builders are buried. For the gospel of the world is a gospel of the left hand only-gather, gather, gather-and it leadeth a man to a full barn and an early grave, a poisoned feast, a cup running over beside a bed of death. But I bring thee the gospel of the two hands, wherein the right hand of length holdeth the man alive to enjoy what the left hand hath filled. Verily I say unto thee, it is a small thing to make a man rich; the great thing is to keep him alive long enough that the riches become a blessing and not a legacy of regret.
Seal this beginning upon thine heart: I have wept before thee, that thou mightest weep with me; and the tears of the sower are the seed of the joy of the reaper. Now lift up thine eyes, for the doctrine of the two hands shall turn the weeping into a harvest.
