A Prayer for Daily Strength

Today, dear Lord, Thy strength bestow,
For I am weak and full of sin.
Subdue my pride; rein in my lusts,
And mold my will till it is Thine.

Today, dear Lord, forgiveness grant,
For I Thy Law have oft disdained.
Ashamed, I venture near the throne,
And kneeling, beg for grace again.

Today, dear Lord, deliver me
And save me from the tempter's lure.
For ev'ry trial that I meet
Please give me power to endure.

Today, dear Lord, Thy favor show
And satisfy my ev'ry need.
And grant that I may prove to all
Thy love, with loving word and deed.

Today, dear Lord, Thy truth impart,
For Thou alone art wholly true.
Remove all falseness from my heart
And teach me what is right anew.

—20 June 2010. To “Hesperus (Quebec)” or “Tallis' Canon.”

May the Mind of Christ, the Humble

May the mind of Christ, the humble,
Teach me servitude afresh.
He, though God, Himself did empty,
Taking human flesh.

May the will of Christ, submissive,
Supersede and swallow mine.
He, though anguished, prayed the Father,
“Not my will but Thine.”

May the death of Christ, the lowly,
Keep my soul in awe employed.
He endured that earthly shaming
For His Heav'nly joy.

May the life of Christ, the risen,
Make me live, though I should die.
Raised in glory, now He sitteth
At the Father's side.

May the hope of Christ's returning
Spur me on to do His Will,
That, when He shall judge the nations,
I'll be faithful still.

—6-7 June 2010. To “St Leonards” (“May the mind of Christ, my Savior”).

Funereal Thoughts

Tonight, I to the fun’ral-parlor went,
There to see the body of a saint,
Who, two days past, this mortal coil did leave
And to the arms of Christ, her Lord, was sent.
And as I stood, surrounded thus
By friends, who many months I had not met,
Both young and old, who came as I—
Their last respects to pay,
I wondered if any of them felt as I—
Sad, and ready now to weep and mourn—
Though not for her, who unto Paradise
Was giv’n, nor even for her husband,
Who for more than sixty years hath had her.
The one no heartache knows,
For she in everlasting pleasure rests;
The other, tho’ old, is strong
And shows no outward sign of loss.
No, the reason that I give for feeling thus—
As though I should betake myself to bed
And cry for hours, if not days—is this:
Sometimes the world seems joyous to me,
As if there were no care or end of good,
But now, surrounded thus, by relatives and friends,
Her body in the casket, gently lit
(How odd the earthly temple seems,
When, bereft of spirit, it lies still—
It seems made of wax, and molded by a master)—
It is now that I remember that from dust came men,
And thence they go again—
That nothing here forever will remain,
But all is doomed to sometime its end know.
How can I be happy in this world and body of death?
Tomorrow, the church's hallowed halls
I, with my presence, shall grace,
And there, with all these people I have seen tonight
And more besides, will learn of her life—
When she was born, when she wed,
How she trusted Christ as Head—
Meaningless to the rest of the world,
But not to us, the few who knew her.
And then I will enter depression, as I have done
After every other funeral that I ever attended—
Is it wrong to feel thus?
To mourn not that she died,
But that death lives?
It seems to me that ‘tis not right,
For “death is swallowed up in victory,”
Yet something in me also says ‘tis right,
For did not even Christ, our Lord,
Also groan inside, that this world
In sin should so exist?
I know not, but with this hope console myself—
However dim, at times, it may be seen—
This world is not my final stopping-place,
But go I on to worlds as yet unseen,
Where Christ shall wipe all teardrops from my face,
And I shall worship Him, my Master
And my Saviour, in the light of His glory.

—12 May 2010

The Noble Book

One day I found a noble book,
And to its study I betook.
And as I read, I wondered ‘loud
If this fine world of tree and cloud,
Of beast, and bird, and flower, too
Were fair as Eden, shining new.
But nay! The garden, long ago,
Was fairer still than all I know.
And as I sat in rapturous thought,
I thanked the God who made of naught
The many things that I did see—
But made them all to perfect be.

And then I had but little read
But learned of things that filled with dread—
Of how a man, created good
And placed within idyllic world
Should then go spurn the very God
That fashioned him from formless sod;
And how his seed, now sinful born
Should also show the selfsame scorn.

And o'er the tome I still did pore
And learned of golden days of yore
When men were men, and acted so
Like men had ought—ah! Long ago!
But all my happiness was marred
By that with which the world was scarred,
For running, like a scarlet thread,
Through all the tales that I had read:
The very scorn that I had seen—
The same first seen in Eden green.
It seemed, for every good I found,
A hundred evils did abound.

And as I hung on every word
A truly wondrous thing I heard—
That God, enthroned in majesty
Should come to earth a slave to be—
Both truly God, and man, like me!
But even more incredibly,
That He should take my sin, as well,
And suffer all the wrath of Hell.
For I could never hope to pay
The debt to take my sin away.
I, dead in sin—He, full alive
Yet He for me was crucified.
Ah! Blest and highest mystery—
The King of Heav’n would die for me!
‘Tis far too great a mystery—
To make a slave of enemy,
And further still, a son make he—
For me to fathom thoroughly!

But while each page I turned with care,
Yet one thing more I learned in there.
This book held yet another side—
The love of bridegroom for his bride,
And how the God that died for me
Will take His servant home to be
Forever with Him, as He said
To all who claim Him as their Head;
How one day, He will call me home—
Tho’ how and when, I do not know—
Perhaps o’er Jordan's shining waves,
Or through the sky’s gold, cloudy haze.

—4/26/2010