March 5, 2007
Happy Monday!!
Those of us here in the South can feel spring in the air. Its right around the corner and the dead, brown winter that has lasted longer than I can ever remember here in Houston, is starting to green up. Spring makes us think about hope and that good things are going to happen in our lives. We get out and dig around in the yard, or do some spring cleaning, or plan for summer vacations. When I would get depressed, my dad used to say “Just think what would happen if God’s organization of the world didn’t work one day? What would you do if you got up one morning and the sun had failed to rise.”
Frankly, I thought Dad was kind of crazy and I didn’t hold too much to what he was trying to say to me. But you know what, just think how much we count on the order of the universe and honestly, what would we do if one day the sun failed to rise or spring never came?
So here is what I wish you this week, you have seven new mornings and in those I hope that you :
1) plant a seed of hope, either in the ground, or on your patio, or in your heart;
2) that you consider what life would be like if the things you know are true around you weren’t, whether that’s the love of your mother, the steadfastness of a friend, the sun coming up every morning, or God’s grace, and
3) do something for someone that gives them hope, whether in deed, in thought, or in prayer.
Jake-like for one more week, here is another poem. This one says something very beautiful, that the things precious to us, remain in our heart and can be taken out and revisited when we need them. We can count on them just like we count on the order of nature. Young and old have seen this poem, but really, could anything be anymore beautiful… or more hopeful? Good only Henry W, 200 years ago wrote this and it is STILL true today. (For those of you who might not know what a daffodil is, substitute the beautiful fields of bluebonnets that are just about to grace Texas hills.. for those of you not from Texas, the only word of hope I can offer, from Lyle’s lips to you..
“That’s right you’re not from, Texas That’s right you’re not from Texas, That’s right you’re not from Texas, But Texas wants you anyway”
“Daffodils” (1804)
I wander’d lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch’d in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed — and gazed — but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
By William Wordsworth (1770-1850).
