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When My Name Is In The Paper

 When My Name’s In The Paper, What Then?


Our calendars are full, appointments to keep

We're too busy to eat, and there's no time to sleep

We barely get to bed when we hear the alarm beep

But when our name's in the paper, what then?


Reunions and weddings and vacation plans

We've gardens to harvest, green beans to be canned

We’ll never get caught up with all life's demands

But when our name’s in the paper, what then?


There are bills to be paid and groceries to buy

Meals to be planned for, we must make that pie

With our busy lifestyles, we've just no time to die,

But when our name's in the paper, what then?


To do lists won't matter, many things left undone.

We had time to do everything under the sun

But there'll come a time when our life's race is run

And our name's in the paper, what then?


What then of the many opportunities we missed?

What then of the prayers left unsaid on our list?

What then when our souls fade away into mist?

What then, busy Christian, what then?


When heaven's pearly doors before us swing wide

And we've done just enough to barely get us inside

Will we stand in His presence, or look for someplace to hide

When we face our Redeemer, what then?


Excuses will fail us when comes that great day

Will we wish we had done more when no prayers left to pray

When crowns are bring given, oh what will we say?

With no time left to labor, what then?


The field’s white to harvest, but we must not wait

More reapers are needed and it’s getting late.

So work while it's day let your effort be great

When your friends see your name in the paper.


Written by Joan Rowden Hart June 30, 2017

Copyright 2017


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