Miracles about Horses

This is from C.S. Lewis book titled Miracles:

These small and perishable bodies we now have were given to us as ponies are given to schoolboys.  We must learn to manage: not that we may some day be free of horses altogether but that some day we may ride bareback, confident and rejoicing, those greater mounts, those winged, shining and world-shaking horses which perhaps even now expect us with impatience, pawing and snorting in the King’s stables.  Not that the gallop would be of any value unless it were a gallop with the King; but how else – since He has retained His own charger – should we accompany Him?

“Heroes must be more than driftwood”

I’m reading a book about Kazakhstan’s tragic history titled The Silent Steppe:The story of a Kazakh Nomad under Stalin.  The book’s story is told by Mukhamet Shayakhmetov about the period when he was nine years old in the early 1930s and the starvation period he and his Kazakh family experienced.  This is no different from what the Ukrainians experienced during their period of Holodomor (Terror Famine in 1932-33). 

The following short poem from Streams in the Desert makes me think of Mukhamet as my hero, the TRUE Kazakh Nomad:

“Human strength and human greatness
Spring not from life’s sunny side,
Hereos must be more than driftwood
Floating on a waveless tide.”

 

Happy Orthodox Easter Today!!!

Fun to remember the celebrations we used to have in Ukraine with both our western Eastern and also Orthodox Easter.  This year was a large gap between the calendar dates for celebrating Easter, we already celebrated on March 23rd.  Today we will finish off the rest of the Paska bread that is a part of the Orthodox tradtion.  Amazing to find that Russian type bread here among this nominally Muslim country of Kazakhstan. Wonderful to enjoy the spring weather, clearest I’ve seen it yet down in the valley from one window view in our apartment and beautiful mountain peaks from our other windows.  Glory to God in the highest!

The following is a poem from “Streams in the Desert” fitting for today’s Orthodox Easter:

O sad-faced mourners, who each day are wending
Through churchyard paths of cypress and of yew,
Leave for today the low graves you are tending,
And lift your eyes to God’s eternal blue!

It is no time for bitterness or sadness;
Twine Easter lilies, not pale asphodels;
Let your souls thrill to the caress of gladness,
And answer the sweet chime of Easter bells.

If Christ were still within the grave’s low prison,
A captive of the enemy we dread;
If from that moldering cell He had not risen,
Who then could chide the gloomy tears you shed?

If Christ were dead there would be need to sorrow,
But He has risen and vanquished death for aye;
Hush, then your sighs, if only till the morrow,
At Easter give your grief a holiday.

by May Riley Smith

Tales of Pelicans and Aloe Plants

Have you heard the tale of the aloe plant,
Away in the sunny clime?
By humble growth of a hundred years
It reaches its blooming time;
And then a wondrous bud at its crown
Breaks into a thousand flowers;
This floral queen, in its blooming seen,
Is the pride of the tropical bowers,
But the plant to the flower is sacrifice,
For it blooms but once, and it dies.

Have you further heard of the aloe plant,
That grows in the sunny clime;
How every one of its thousand flowers,
As they drop in the blooming time,
Is an infant plant that fastens its roots
In the place where it falls on the ground,
And as fast as they drop from the dying stem,
Grow lively and lovely around?
By dying, it liveth a thousand-fold
In the young that spring from the death of the old.

Have you heard the tale of the pelican,
The Arabs’ Gimel el Bahr,
That lives in the African solitudes,
Where the birds that live lonely are?
Have you heard how it loves its tender young,
And cares and toils for their good,
It brings them water from mountain far,
And fishes the seas for their food.
In famine it feeds them—what love can devise!
The blood of its bosom—and, feeding them, dies.

Have you heard this tale—the best of them all–
The tale of the Holy and True,
He dies, but His life, in untold souls
Lives on in the world anew;
His seed prevails, and is filling the earth,
As the stars fill the sky above.
He taught us to yield up the love of life,
For the sake of the life of love.
His death is our life, His loss is our gain;
The joy for the tear, the peace for the pain.

from Streams in the Desert

Russian Fable: Swan, Pike and Crab

Thankfully I was able to find a poem from a Russian fable which describes the conundrum our Central Asian university faces.  We have separate ethnic groups in places of authority who are trying to pull the same load in vastly different directions.  Krylov was on to something about how our institution of “higher learning” will TRY to get itself out of its own mess.  How DID Krylov know, will we survive?

Once a Swan, a Pike, and a Crab

Tried to pull a loaded cab, …

They pulled hard, did not flinch,

But they gained not an inch …

The Swan pulled hard toward the sky

The Crab to crawl backward did try,

The Pike made for the river nearby.

They could not agree on an approach out of the mess.

Kingly Purple and Purple Lilacs

I’m missing the beautiful purple lilacs in Kyiv, Ukraine this time of year along with their Orthodox celebrations of Easter.  The lilacs in Almaty, Kazakhstan are more spindly and less full, however, just below our balcony I got a photo of some pretty lilacs.  Reminds me of when I lived in Alexandria, Virginia where people tried growing lilac bushes but they do best in northern climes like Minnesota.  The following poem from Streams in the Desert fits with my Easter thoughts:

‘Twas by a path of sorrows drear
     Christ entered into rest;
And shall I look for roses here,
     Or think that earth is blessed?
     Heaven’s whitest lilies blow
     From earth’s sharp crown of woe:
Who here his cross can meekly bear,
Shall wear the kingly purple there.

The Eye of the Storm

From today’s reading of Streams in the Desert
Fear not that the whirlwind shall carry thee hence,
Nor wait for its onslaught in breathless suspense,
Nor shrink from the whips of the terrible hail,
But pass through the edge to the heart of the gale,
For there is a shelter, sunlighted and warm,
And Faith sees her God through the eye of the storm.

The passionate tempest with rush and wild roar
And threatenings of evil may beat on the shore,
The waves may be mountains, the fields battle plains,
And the earth be immersed in a deluge of rains,
Yet, the soul, stayed on God, may sing bravely its psalm,
For the heart of the storm is the center of calm.

Let hope be not quenched in the blackness of night,
Though the cyclone awhile may have blotted the light,
For behind the great darkness the stars ever shine,
And the light of God’s heavens, His love shall make thine,
Let no gloom dim thine eyes, but uplif t them on high
To the face of thy God and the blue of His sky.

The storm is thy shelter from danger and sin,
And God Himself takes thee for safety within;
The tempest with Him passeth into deep calm,
And the roar of the winds is the sound of a psalm.
Be glad and serene when the tempest clouds form;
God smiles on His child in the eye of the Storm.

ABANDONED!

What is it about poets who rhyme poems but not really?  The following poem entitled Abandoned is by an unknown author perhaps from a century before and maybe British.  I am trying to figure out how Ghost and cost and lost rhyme.  See what you think:

Utterly abandoned to the Holy Ghost!
Seeking all His fulness at whatever cost;
Cutting all the shore-lines, launching in the deep
Of His mighty power–strong to save and keep.

Utterly abandoned to the Holy Ghost!
Oh! the sinking, sinking, until self is lost!
Until the emptied vessel lies broken at His feet;
Waiting till His filling shall make the work complete.

Utterly abandoned to the will of God;
Seeking for no other path than my Master trod;
Leaving ease and pleasure, making Him my choice,
Waiting for His guidance, listening for His voice.

Utterly abandoned! no will of my own;
For time and for eternity, His, and His alone;
All my plans and purposes lost in His sweet will,
Having nothing, yet in Him all things possessing still.

Utterly abandoned! ’tis so sweet to be
Captive in His bonds of love, yet so wondrous free;
Free from sin’s entanglements, free from doubt and fear,
Free from every worry, burden, grief or care.

Utterly abandoned! oh, the rest is sweet,
As I tarry, waiting, at His blessed feet;
Waiting for the coming of the Guest divine,
Who my inmost being shall perfectly refine.

Lo! He comes and fills me, Holy Spirit sweet!
I, in Him, am satisfied! I, in Him, complete!
And the light within my soul shall nevermore grow dim
While I keep my covenant–abandoned unto Him!

Naturally we look at the words and quiz over rhyme and abandon the truths the poem holds.  However, spiritually we should be embracing these truths that work today because He is the same yesterday, today and forever!  Alleluia, what a Savior!!!

“In the Full Sunshine of His Smile”

“Be quiet! why this anxious heed
     About thy tangled ways?
God knows them all.  He giveth speed
     And He allows delays.
‘Tis good for thee to walk by faith
     And not by sight.
Take it on trust a little while.
Soon shalt thou read the mystery aright
In the full sunshine of His smile.”

“Stand Still!”

“Spiritual forces cannot work while earthly forces are active.”

I was reminded of that truth yesterday in my reading of Streams in the Desert.  Today it was punctuated yet again by riveting words by C.H. Spurgeon.  In the condensed form, Spurgeon wrote the following based on Exodus 14:13 “Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord”:
These words contain God’s command to the believer when he is reduced to great straits and brought into extraordinary difficulties.  He cannot retreat; he cannot go forward; he is shut upon the right hand and on the left.  What is he now to do?

The Master’s word to him is “stand still.”