Saturday, April 5, 2014

Wisdom 5:6-13

We, then, have strayed away from the way of truth, and the light of justice did not shine for us and the sun did not rise for us. We had our fill of the ways of mischief and of ruin; We journeyed through impassable deserts, but the way of the LORD we knew not. What did our pride avail us? What did wealth and its boastfulness afford us? All of them passed like a shadow and like a fleeting rumor; like a ship traversing the heaving water, of which, when it has passed, no trace can be found, no path of its keel in the waves. Or like a bird flying through the air; no evidence of its course is to be found—but the fluid air, lashed by the beat of pinions, and cleft by the rushing force of speeding wings, is traversed: and afterward no mark of passage can be found in it. Or as when an arrow has been shot at a mark, the parted air straightway flows together again so that none discerns the way it went through—even so, we, once born abruptly came to nought and had no sign of virtue to display, but were consumed in our wickedness…

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