[Faith-talk] Good Night Message for Sunday, August 19 2012

[Paul]

Hello and good evening to all North Americans and good morning/day in other parts of the world.  I hope that, by God's matchless grace and His providential care, that your day went well or, in the case of our friends in the Land Down Under or possibly even in the Back of Beyond (something our Australian members would understand), that your day is going well.

How many of you remember a poem several days ago by Gladys A. Carmichael of California? Well, she's back again with another poem to grace your computer screens, not to mention our screen readers.  Entitled "Growing Old," it is rendered as follows:

Though my eyes are now dim,
Can scarcely read anymore,
Many gems from God's Word
I have now laid in store.

Life has been enriched
With God's precious truth
>From earliest childhood
And all through my youth.
More precious than gold
Than life at its sun
Is God's Holy Word
When each day is done.

He makes me to walk in pastures green
My thoughts now lift
To a heavenly scene.
All God's people are gathered there
Round the great white throne
So lovely and fair.
Dear friends and loved ones
We'll meet there, too;
We'll never grow old
In the earth made new.
Hearing and eyesight
Will then be restored.
Free from all pain,
We shall walk with our Lord.

Our bodies, now crippled and feeble and old
Restored them shall be
When our Lord we behold.
Oh glorious morning
That will set us free
>From bondage of suffering
Through eternity.

And there you have Grace's rhyme for today.  As many of you recall, when this poem was written in probably 1972 she was, along with blindness, confined to a wheelchair for 30 years, meaning that she had been in that condition since the early 1940's.  However this did not deter her from writing poetry.  The original readers of the Christian Record Talking Magazine as well as you are and were the beneficiaries of her written work.

And now may the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob just keep us safe, individually and collectively, throughout this night or day and especially in these last days in which we live.  Your Christian brother, Paul