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Poems and Short
Features
The Burden of the
Hour
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God
broke our years to hours and days,
That hour by hour and day by day,
Just going on a little way,
We might be able all along
To keep quite strong.
Should all the weight of life
Be laid across our shoulders,
And the future rife with woe and struggle
Meet us face to face at just one place
We could not go; our feet would stop.
And so God lays a little on us every day,
And never, I believe, on all the way
With burdens bear so deep
Or pathways lie so steep
But we can go, if by God's power,
We only bear the burden of the hour.
—Poems
of the Way, p. 12
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The
Edge
(1 Corinthians 10:13)
Most
of us will never know
How dark this world can seem
When life becomes more nightmare than a dream
So to all of you who have survived
A visit to the edge
I trust that you will understand this pledge:
I promise I will always leave
The darkness for
the light
I swear by all
that’s holy
I will not give up
the fight
I’ll drink down
death like water
Before I ever come
again
To that dark place
Where I might make
The choice for life
to end.
I’ve
found that as I’ve traveled
Through the landscape of my life
That mountain tops make valleys in between
And when that nameless sadness
Like a cloud comes over me
I look back on all the brightness I have seen.
And
realize that though my world
Might seem so torn apart
Most often it is joy that breaks the heart,
And that I am the richest man
Though I must beg for bread
For the very One who might condemn
Has called me friend instead.
I
will always leave the darkness for the light
I will not give up the fight.
—Michael Card
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Life’s Journeys
In pastures green? Not
always. Sometimes He
Who knoweth best, in kindness leadeth me
In weary ways, where heavy shadows be.
Out of the sunshine warm and soft and bright
Out of the sunshine into darkest night.
I oft would faint with terror and with fright.
Only for this—I know He holds my hand.
So whether in the green or desert land
I trust altho I may not understand.
So whether on the hilltops, high and fair
I dwell, or in the sunless valleys, where
The shadows lie—what matter? He is there!
And more than this, where’er the pathway lead
He gives to me no helpless, broken reed.
But His own hand, sufficient for my need.
So where He leads me I can safely go,
And in the blest hereafter I shall know,
Why in His wisdom He hath led me so!
—Poems
of the Way, p. 58
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The Rainy Day
The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the moldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.
My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the moldering past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.
Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.
—Poems
of Dawn, p. 287 |
If defeated, carry no bitterness in your heart. New
flowers of hope will spring forth from the ashes of
defeat. There has never been a hero with no defeats,
either before or after the victory.
—Deep Waters and a Bubbling Brook, p.135
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