Monthly Archives: April 2009
Poem of the Week
Forever Doth the Earth Record
(Inspired by 1st Chronicles 16:30-36)
Forever doth the earth record
The sublime power of her Lord;
Within the beauty of her frame,
His might forevermore proclaim.
The universe doth ev’ry day
His law continually obey
While endless wonders ever sing
Praise to the Omnipotent King.
The sun, through courts above our heads,
Declares his Maker, while he treads,
And cries to all the earth aloud
The boundless sov’reignty of God.
At night, the moon takes up the tale
That holds the earth within its spell
While all the starry throngs repeat
That God eternally is great.
Below the earth continues on
The heavens’ never-ceasing song;
The oceans swell and billows rise
To join the music of the skies.
The mountains in a psalm unite;
To sing of God is their delight
And storms arise above the sea
To display all His majesty.
Within the vale, the trees rejoice
And rushing rivers add their voice,
While countless birds in artless lays
Intonate their Creator’s praise.
The flow’ry meadows bloom with joy
And all the beasts their tongues employ
To teach to all the world abroad
That He who made them is their God.
Whom in His image God did make
And chosen for His pleasure’s sake,
It is thy gift to know the song
Creation sings with tuneful tongue.
Then let from earth’s remotest end
God’s praises from His own ascend;
And with the earth forever sing
Praise to our Father, God and King.
Written August 23rd, 2007
Poem of the Week
My Prayer
Great Father of undying fame
From Whom Thy chosen gain their name;
Creator of the land and sea,
I humbly bow the knee to Thee.
Thy richest grace, according to,
Lord, strengthen this poor soul anew
That I might void the tempter’s snare
And divers persecutions bear.
Oh may Thy Son within me live
By faith, which Thou to me didst give;
And may His love for me inspire
For Him a holy, firm desire.
The love of Christ I wish to know
That Thee I might to others show;
And with Thy Fullness, fill me Lord
As I pursue Thy Holy Word.
To God the Father, and the Son,
And Holy Spirit, Three in One
To all the Holy Trinity,
All honor, praise and glory be.
Written December 25th, 2005
Afternoon Stroll
One of my favorite things the whole wide world to do is take a walk. Especially in springtime. Especially with my best friend.
Yesterday, I spent the afteroon at Elisha Wahlquist’s house and when the rain decided to stop, we went outside for a walk down the winding country road.
Elisha and I both love the great outdoors. Because of geographical seperation, we seldom get to enjoy it together and instead have to rely on letters to describe the natural wonders we see each day. We call these descriptions “poetic rambles.” Elisha has this phrase she likes to quote and it goes something like this: Abscence is to friendship what wind is to fire; it puts out the little, it kindles the great. The fact that we rarely see each other does nothing to drive us apart. If anything, it draws us closer together. So when we get days that we can actually spend together, they are precious as gold to us.
Of course, I had my camera with me. Elisha just got one for her birthday last week, and her sister Beth took the pictures of us on it.
Beth caught me…
..and I caught her!
The area the Wahlquists live in is an especially lovely part of Texas. Lots of winding hills, wooded glens and limestone ridges. It’s one of my favorite places in the whole world to be. This is looking ahead at a leafy green tunnel.
It had stormed for most of the morning and part of the afternoon. Elisha and I had a good laugh about it; it is a bit strange that of all days for us to see each other it would be tempestous. Elisha and I have been weather fanatics for years. I can’t been in a thunderstorm without thinking of her and vice versa. We live close enough together that we can experiance the same storm systemns. Many times I have been startled awake during a spring cloudburst, padded to my window to watch the driving rain and brilliant lightening flashes and thought “I wonder if Elisha’s watching this storm right now too.” More often than not, sometimes in the same hour, Elisha is thinking the same thing. And then we’ll laugh about it via letter the next week.
Anyway, all the rain caused little rivulets and minute waterfalls in all sorts of places.
One of their neighbors has cultivated a beautiful garden of irises. I love irises.
A birdhouse (obviously).
This is a little wooded area about a quarter of a mile from the Wahlquist’s house. I can imagine just how exquisite it would be in early morning sunlight when all the new leaves catch the light and glow.
And here is a nearby farm. Elisha has sent me pictures from this field (and this walk) many times over the years.
Stephen in the hide n’ seek tree.
Lichen.
I was delighted when Elisha pointed these saffron blossoms out to me. We don’t have these where I live. These are primroses - not evening primroses - but the regular kind. They seem to like limestones ridges, hence why we don’t have any.
Here you can clearly see where the rain has eroded the dirt, revealing the limestone beneath.
Stephen takes a picture.
This little bush was twined all over with wild honeysuckle. The scent was delicious.
Another leafy green tunnel.
It’s a jungle out there…
This is a close up of the white variety of honey suckle.
Because of the rain, everything was misty and dewdroppy.
Magnificent old ceder elms.
Here some sort of vine catches the sunlight which was just breaking through the storm clouds.
Pastureland behind the Wahlquist’s house. I think it’s beautiful.
This is standing cypress. Elisha tells me the flowers look really strange. I’ll have to ask her to send a picture of one when they come in bloom.
These two pictures are totally unrelated to the walk, but I wanted to post them anyway. This is Deborah Wahlquist’s pet budgie Timmy. I think he’s totally cute - he’s even smaller than our Pixie!
And this is one of the Wahlquist’s cats - Sheriff. The other cat is named Deputy. Elisha tells me he acts like he owns the whole house. So does my cat, come to think of it.
Of course, the whole reason why I enjoyed everything was not because I got to see such beautiful parts of nature, but because I was enjoying it with Elisha. There’s no substitute really for a friend that you’ve known a long time and have strong chords of sympathy with. Elisha is as close to me as my sisters are, and it’s a closeness we’ve developed almost entirely by letter… paper conversations we like to call it. Ever since I was very young, I wanted a best friend. I am blessed. God gave one to me, one that has many of the same ideals and convictions and continually encourages me to walk more and more Christlike each year. In days like these, that is a rare thing. And I wouldn’t trade her for anything in the world that you could offer.
An empty sky, a world of heather,
Purple of foxglove, yellow of broom;
We two among them wading together,
Shaking out honey, treading perfume.
Crowds of bees are giddy with clover,
Crowds of grasshoppers skip at our feet,
Crowds of larks at their matins hang over,
Thanking the Lord for a life so sweet.
Flusheth the rise with her purple favor,
Gloweth the cleft with her golden ring,
‘Twixt the two brown butterflies waver,
Lightly settle, and sleepily swing.
We two walk till the purple dieth
And short dry grass under foot is brown.
But one little streak at a distance lieth
Green like a ribbon to prank the down.
Over the grass we stepped unto it,
And God He knoweth how blithe we were!
Never a voice to bid us eschew it:
Hey the green ribbon that showed so fair!
Hey the green ribbon! we kneeled beside it,
We parted the grasses dewy and sheen;
Drop over drop there filtered and slided
A tiny bright beck that trickled between.
Tinkle, tinkle, sweetly it sang to us,
Light was our talk as of faëry bells–
Faëry happy-bells faintly rung to us
Down in their fortunate parallels.
Hand in hand, while the sun peered over,
We lapped the grass on that youngling spring;
Swept back its rushes, smoothed its clover,
And said, “Let us follow it westering.”
A dappled sky, a world of meadows,
Circling above us the black rooks fly
Forward, backward; lo, their dark shadows
Flit on the blossoming tapestry–
Flit on the beck, for her long grass parteth
As hair from a maid’s bright eyes blown back;
And, lo, the sun like a lover darteth
His flattering smile on her wayward track.
Sing on! we sing in the glorious weather
Till one steps over the tiny strand,
So narrow, in sooth, that still together
On either brink we go hand in hand.
Jean Ingelow
Smokey Sunset
This is what evening looks like when smoke from West Texas forest fires blows east on strong winds. I’ve been in dust storms blown in from the west, but I can’t remember a day that was so heavily clouded by smoke. Everything outside smelled like a burning woodlot.
It reminded me of a scene from a favorite story…
“…much more light than they had yet seen in that country was pouring in through the now empty doorway…. The wind that blew in their faces was cold, yet somehow stale. They were looking from a high terrace and there was a great landscape spread out below them. Low down and near the horizon hung a great red sun, far bigger than our sun. Digory felt at once that it was also older than ours: a sun near the end of its life, weary of looking down upon the world.” The Magician’s Nephew, chapter 5.
Poem of the Week
Entrust My Heart
Entrust my heart to Thee, I will,
Thyself canst all my soul fulfill;
Its unassuaged and sinful state,
Thyself canst all these ills abate.
Myself content in Thee shall be,
At rest for all eternity.
Temptation spare me, Lord, I pray,
That I not bring Thee to dismay;
So weak am I, I cannot fight
With what would lead me from the right;
O God that lov’st ineffably,
Forgive me when I stray from Thee.
Mine Ebenezar, Lord, I raise;
This far I’ve come, now Thee I praise
And lay my heart before Thy throne
That Thou wouldst reign there, Thou alone;
Thine own, Thine own – oh, can it be?
Thine own for all eternity!
Written March 8th, 2009
A Very Special Visit
On April 7th, my great uncle, Lee Snead, and his wife Grace, stopped on the way home from visiting their grandchildren. They are absolutely wonderful people who love the Lord. We’ve wanted to have them over for years, but somehow that never happened, so having them here was a special treat that hopefully won’t be our last. Uncle Lee had an army career and was in different positions in both World War II and the Korean War. Aunt Grace was one of the cream of the crop schoolteachers (4th grade) and she is the perfect example of her name, Grace, as she is so graceful in her mannerisms and so gracious to us children. Her son and his family are underground missionaries to China. Two weeks ago, they had visited us and gave us first hand accounts about what is is like to be a witness for Christ in a dark nation opposed to religion. It was a delight to have Uncle Lee and Aunt Grace sitting right here in our living room! Aunt Grace is from a Norwegian background and her family settled in Wisconsin and Minnesota. She explained to us the roots of her family in that area. Aunt Grace is very pretty and her Norwegian background is evident in her looks.
Partway through the afternoon my mother handed Uncle Lee an item and asked him if he might tell us a story or two.
The item she handed happened to be my great-grandfather’s telegraph.
My great-grandfather Leland “Skeeter” Snead was a telegrapher for the Western Union. He didn’t even have so much as a high school education, but that never stopped him. Anything he wanted to learn, he did through careful study of books. He also was a horse trainer in Oklahoma for a time, and a radio engineer. When Skeeter went to enlist in World War II with his friend, both of them found out they were too lean so they worked out at the YMCA until they met enlisting requirements. That’s when the Army found out Skeeter’s telegraphing skills. He was so skilled the Army kept him state-side and he communicated top secret information during the war. He also was the telegrapher for the famous horse race with SeaBiscuit and also for the NY Yankee and the NY Dodgers baseball teams way back then. We also heard stories about Uncle Lee’s childhood and his time in the army. We smiled when he detailed those things he did not like as a child such as being pesticide control for his father’s garden by squishing bugs, keeping the basement coal furnace fueled and cleaned, and washing the kitchen floor of the farmhouse where the stove was fueled with wood. Uncle Lee encouraged us to be readers and now we are even more motivated to read. He also explained how the telegraphers would send a few short words to radio announcers and then the radio announcers would embellish it into a thrilling story. The Snead side of the family is Irish and Scottish.
At the close of the evening we had family worship together, and then sang scripture songs. We then asked our Aunt and Uncle if they had a favorite hymn. Uncle Lee sang, a capella, a song I had never heard. It is one of the most precious moments of our lives and I will never forget it. Aunt Grace asked for “How Great Thou Art” and so we closed with that.
I can not thank God enough for the godly heritage He orchestrated in my family.
