[Faith-talk] Good Night Message for Sunday, August 26 2012

[Paul]

Hello and good day to you all or evening here in North America.  Sorry to be late, but I was out pretty much all day.  But now I'm back, hoping that we all, in our own unique ways, had a good time in the Lord today.

Charles Ross of Loveland CO graces our screen readers with his "Thoughts For Meditation," rendered as follows:

Cooling snow lies on the summit
Of some lofty Matterhorn.
An oasis decks the desert;
There's a rose beside the thorn.
Sparkling streams flow down the canyon
Of a rugged mountainside.
Gleaming flowers are in wastelands
Where the rattlesnakes abide,
And there's glory on the cactus
With a delicate perfume,
Though the prickly thorns repulse us
When the buds burst into bloom.

There are blessings in the hardships
That we mortals undergo.
There is strength gained by enduring
That the weak will never know.
Often, there are gemstones
Hidden in the roughest kind of rock;
There are treasures oft unbidden
Borne by ships that never dock.
There's an illness that is cured
By the promise in the bowl;
There's a shadow that's obscured
By the sunset's afterglow.

And there you have it for today.  For the life of me, I personally can't figure out how to meditate on these lines.  Maybe some of you are more open to this kind of poetry than the undersigned is.  Anyway hope you enjoyed reading it.

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 and friend, Paul