"Labor of Love," by Andrew Peterson

It was not a silent night
There was blood on the ground
You could hear a woman cry
In the alleyways that night
On the streets of David's town

And the stable was not clean
And the cobblestones were cold
And little Mary full of grace
With the tears upon her face
Had no mother's hand to hold

It was a labor of pain
It was a cold sky above
But for the girl on the ground in the dark
With every beat of her beautiful heart
It was a labor of love

Noble Joseph at her side
Callused hands and weary eyes
There were no midwives to be found
In the streets of David's town
In the middle of the night

So he held her and he prayed
Shafts of moonlight on his face
But the baby in her womb
He was the maker of the moon
He was the Author of the faith
That could make the mountains move

It was a labor of pain
It was a cold sky above
But for the girl on the ground in the dark
With every beat of her beautiful heart
It was a labor of love
For little Mary full of grace
With the tears upon her face
It was a labor of love

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

By Starfield

"Cry In My Heart"

There's a cry in my heart
For Your glory to fall
For Your presence to fill up my senses
There's a yearning again
A thirst for discipline
A hunger for things that are deeper

Could You take me beyond?
Could You carry me through?
If I open my heart?
Could I go there with You?
(For I've been here before
But I know there's still more
Oh, Lord, I need to know You)

For what do I have
If I don't have You, Jesus?
What in this life
Could mean any more?
You are my rock
You are my glory
You are the lifter
Of my head
Lifter of this head

http://whyhelloamy.blogspot.com/

If you're curious about some of what my time has been like in Canada, go here. That'd be my great roommate's blog.

Convicting.

Wells, David F. God the Evangelist: How the Holy Spirit Works to Bring Men and Women to Faith. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987.

"Success is the sacrament of a secular age. Its outward and visible signs are affluence, prestige, power, the ascent of the corporate ladder, the wider influence, the bigger church, the biggest audience. Its inward and invisible grace is its sense of having arrived, of being somebody . . . who is known, who has power. Somebody to be reckoned with.

This motivation in the search for God's power is especially noticeable in societies where succeeding is important; in contrast, the search for God's power in the Bible is inseparable from suffering, humiliation, and the loss of those things that give us standing in the world. It is not for nothing that Jesus spoke of the disciple's cross, of losing limbs and eyes, of the hostility of the world . . . .

[In these pages] we have encountered the Holy Spirit in his three major functions: he exhibits the truth, he engenders holiness, and he exercises divine power. These functions are also characteristics, for what he does expresses who he is. And the simple point that has to be rediscovered and should never have been lost is that the Spirit's power comes only in conjunction with his work of truth and holiness. Our obsession with his power is really an obsession with results. At its basest level, it is an admission that we will solicit converts on almost any terms and that gospel preaching can legitimately be carried on by almost anyone, regardless of how he or she lives. In thus seeking naked results we are dividing the Spirit's work of power from his work of truth (with respect to the convert) and of holiness (with respect to the evangelist). We are dividing what cannot be divided."

A letter from Walker Iyer, likely to Amy C., as published in her biography of him, This One Thing:

"To one tempted to introspection he wrote:

'Your text in my birthday book, as you may possibly remember, is "In the Hand of God." There is no safer place than that. "No man shall pluck them out of My Father's hand." And it is not merely in His Hand, but indelibly fixed there: "I have graven thee upon the palms of My Hands." We must look, therefore, not at our own oscillating and wavering state, but at the strong Hand which holds us; not at the ruinous tendency within us, but at the safe bulwarks without us and around us. There is no doubt or uncertainty about it. "The righteous"--those who cast themselves on Jesus' righteousness as their one and only hope--are in the Hand of God. And our work is there too, a feeble unsatisfactory thing, but in the Hand of Omnipotence. I know full well, from often repeated experience, all your feelings and sense of despair and doubt and unworthiness, but we must not give way to them. We stake our all on Jesus and His precious Blood and the power of His endless life. And they never lose who risk their soul's salvation there. You little know all the doubtings and shakings which I have experienced in India. Why are God's dealings thus? Why does the everlasting Gospel make so little headway? Why is the Christian Church so weak and dead and dark? These and a thousand other doubts and fears, besides those personal ones which I have already mentioned, rise up within one's mind. But doubt is of the devil: faith is of God. And one anchor-truth holds firm, even in darkest hours--if Jesus is not the world's true Saviour, at least there is none other. In other words, it is the cry, the out-leaping cry of Peter, "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life." After all, it is the internal evidence for the truth of the Gospel, rather than external arguments, which is soul-convincing. It is when we taste and see that the Lord is good that we realize the companion truth, "Blessed is the man that trusteth in Him." So we will trust and hope and, by God's grace, love; for we are in the hand of God. May you realize this new year much of the blessedness which springs from such a consciousness.'

And again to the same tempted one:

'I think you make a mistake about yourself in taking dark retrospects. What is the use of looking inwards, except to humble ourselves and get us to the dust? Who dare write anything but failure over a single day of life? But, surely, instead of useless complaints, we should seek to remedy, in God' s strength, what is wrong. Is it neglected prayer? Well, let a definite time be set apart and jealously kept for prayer. Is it a neglected Bible? Well, it is in our own hands. Let us seek time to read it. Above all, there must be more looking Christward. He is our righteousness and our salvation. Then why do we seek righteousness in ourselves? I think that you take morose views. There is the Word, there is the Throne of Grace, there is the Fountain and the Wardrobe. Vain self-accusations (though who does not need to accuse self?) do no good. We must seek new grace for each new day.'"

"Set to Lilies--Incense Trees"

(From Amy Carmichael's Rose from Brier)

There are two little Bethlehems in the land,
Two little Bethlehems there.
O Wise Men, do you understand
To seek Him everywhere?
The heavenly Child lies holily,
The heavenly Child lies lowlily,
No crown on His soft hair.

There are three crosses on the hill,
Three dreadful crosses there.
And very dark and very chill
The heavy shuddering air.
Is there a sign to show my Lord,
The sinner's Saviour, Heaven's Adored?
'Tis He with thorn-crowned hair.

For in His lovely baby days
Heaven's door was set ajar,
And angels flew through glimmering ways
And lit a silver star.
No need for halo or for crown
To show the King of Love come down
To dwell where sinners are.

But when He died upon the Rood
(The King of Glory, He),
There was no star, there was no good,
Nor any majesty.
For diadem was only scorn,
A twisted, torturing crown of thorn--
And it was all for me.

"Set to Lilies--Incense Trees"

Quotations can be tiresome, but there is just a chance that what helped those early days may help another's first days of illness. So I copy again from the notebook.

The Bible is amazing. Continually things that differ as much as things can, are bound together by golden chains. "The altar of God... God my exceeding joy." "Although the fig tree shall not blossom... yet I will rejoice in the Lord." "Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden"; and so on from Genesis to Revelation. The title of Psalm lxxx. R. V. M. has taken me out of this room into a new world this morning: Set to lilies, a testimony. The lily breaks through hard ground after rain. Psalm lxxx. is hard ground. It is full of the hardness of suffering with others or for others. All who have ever suffered with this suffering world of ours understand this Psalm. They have walked on this hard ground.*

But the lilies break through the hardness of that (as it appears) purposeless pain, with a sudden upspringing of hope and joy: "And cause Thy face to shine; and we shall be saved." Not I--there is no selfishness here--we, Thy creation--we shall be saved.

Whatever form our dry ground may take at the moment, we can rejoice in our lilies and listen to their testimony. There is an end set to pain, to sin. The present order is not eternal. The day will come, and we shall see it, when the word will be, "Neither shall there be any more pain," and He whom our soul loveth shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass, springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain.

More than the sweetness of lilies springs from the hard ground. There is something that the name Hazarmaveth of Genesis x. 26 now brings to mind.

I never thought that a pot of manna was stored away in that word till I read of Hadramaut (as the word is now) in Southern Arabia.

On the scorching face of that land are towns and cities built entirely of mud bricks (the forts and palaces run to five stories; there is a minaret 175 feet high). No one could explore this region till lately, but now, because of the good government of the Dutch in Java, to which island some of the people from Hadramaut went, friendliness has begun to be, and a few explorers, with the help of the Dutch government's influence, have been able to travel there. Photographs show a blistered land, naked to the sun, covered for miles with sand, broken stones, or bare rock, almost waterless, almost treeless.

But one of the high roads of the Old World, the trade-route from India and Persia to Egypt and Syria, and to other countries round the Mediterranean, ran through this Hazarmaveth, and "it supplied its own fragrant contribution to that ancient-world commerce, a contribution not great in extent but vast in significance." Incense trees grew along the barren plateaux and in the dry river-beds. Merchants came from as far as Persia to find this precious gum. The frankincense and myrrh the wise men offered to our Saviour may have grown in that burning land, and that which gave fragrance to the ointment Mary poured upon His hair and His feet, and the spices that the women laid among the linen for His burying. But the chief thought with me to-day is that this substance, universal symbol of prayer, worship, and adoration, was found in such a place. There is a touch of wonder in that, as in all the thoughts of God.

Sooner or later we find ourselves in some Hazarmaveth of His appointment. We may miss the incense trees or we may find them. If we miss them we shall not find them anywhere else. Have we, who are now in Hazarmaveth (and the name means Valley of death, or Court of death), found our incense trees?

*****

One day in the Madras Museum the Curator, who was showing our children all he could in a single, wonder-filled afternoon, stopped before a sandal-wood tree. They knew that tree and delighted in the scent of its wood. "Where do you think it grows?" Dr. Henderson asked the children. They thought of gardens by the river-side, of forests by the river-side, where the soil is dark and rich. "No," he said, "it grows in the very poorest soil."

One of the hottest of Hazarmaveths for all who are ill must be, I think, Christmas Day. On my second Christmas Day, apart in measure from my dear family, I found comfort in "taking" a new carol, which, unlike most carols, would look not only at Bethlehem, but also at Calvary. There are times when nothing holds the heart but a long, long look at Calvary. How very small anything that we are allowed to endure seems beside that Cross.

*A Bill for the protection of horses was, at the time of this note, before Parliament. The Illustrated London News had played its part by showing haunting pictures of the traffic, and we who care for animals were fighting the cruel spirit of the love of gain by prayer.

"Missed Ends"

This is from Things as They Are. If you have any sensitivity to His call at all, expect to melt your eyes in tears.

"If you could only know what one feels on finding oneself... where the least ray of the Gospel has not penetrated! If those friends who blame... could see from afar what we see, and feel what we feel, they would be the first to wonder that those redeemed by Christ should be so backward in devotion and know so little of the spirit of self-sacrifice. They would be ashamed of the hesitations that hinder us... We must remember that it was not by interceding for the word in glory that Jesus saved it. He gave Himself. Our prayers for the evangelisation of the world are but a bitter irony so long as we only give of our superfluity, and draw back before the sacrifice of ourselves."
-M. Francois Coillard, Africa

"Someone must go, and if no one else will go, he who hears the call must go; I hear the call, for indeed God has brought it before me on every side, and go I must."
-Rev. Henry Watson Fox, India

The tom-toms thumped straight on all night, and the darkness shuddered round me like a living, feeling thing. I could not go to sleep, so I lay awake and looked; and I saw, as it seemed, this:

That I stood on a grassy sward, and at my feet a precipice broke sheer down into infinite space. I looked, but saw no bottom; only cloud shapes, black and furiously coiled, and great shadow-shrouded hollows, and unfathomable depths. Back I drew, dizzy at the depth.

Then I saw forms of people moving single file along the grass. They were making for the edge. There was a woman with a baby in her arms and another little child holding on to her dress. She was on the very verge. Then I saw that she was blind. She lifted her foot for the next step... it trod air. She was over, and the children over with her. Oh, the cry as they went over!

Then I saw more streams of people flowing from all quarters. All were blind, stone blind; all made straight for the precipice edge. There were shrieks as they suddenly knew themselves falling, and a tossing up of helpless arms, catching, clutching at empty air. But some went over quietly, and fell without a sound.

Then I wondered, with a wonder that was simply agony, why no one stopped them at the edge. I could not. I was glued to the ground, anda I could not call; though I strained and tried, only a whisper would come.

Then I saw that along the edge there were sentries set at intervals. But the intervals were far too great; there were wide, unguarded gaps between. And over these gaps the people fell in their blindness, quite unwarned; and the green grass seemed blood-red to me, and the gulf yawned like the mouth of hell.

Then I saw, like a little picture of peace, a group of people under some trees, with their backs turned toward the gulf. They were making daisy chains. Sometimes when a piercing shriek cut the quiet air and reached them it disturbed them, and they thought it a rather vulgar noise. And if one of their number started up and wanted to go and do something to help, then all the others would pull that one down. "Why should you get so excited about it? You must wait for a definite call to go! You haven't finished your daisy chains yet. It would be really selfish," they said, "to leave us to finish the work alone."

There was another group. It was made up of people whose great desire was to get more sentries out; but they found that very few wanted to go, and sometimes there were no sentries set for miles and miles of the edge.

Once a girl stood alone in her place, waving the people back; but her mother and other relations called, and reminded her that her furlough was due; she must not break the rules. And being tired and needing a change, she had to go and rest for a while; but no one was sent to guard her gap, and over and over the people fell, like a waterfall of souls.

Once a child caught at a tuft of grass that grew at the very brink of the gulf; it clung convulsively, and it called--but nobody seemed to hear. Then the roots of the grass gave way, and with a cry the child went over, its two little hands still holding tight to the torn-off bunch of grass. And the girl who longed to be back in her gap thought she heard the little one cry, and she sprang up and wanted to go; at which they reproved her, reminding her that no one is necessary anywhere; the gap would be well taken care of, they knew. And then they sang a hymn.

Then through the hymn came another sound like the pain of a million broken hearts wrung out in one full drop, one sob. And a horror of great darkness was upon me, for I knew what it was--the Cry of the Blood.

Then thundered a Voice, the Voice of the Lord: "And He said, What hast thou done? The voice of thy brothers' blood crieth unto Me from the ground."

The tom-toms still beat heavily, the darkness still shuddered and shivered about me; I heard the yells of the devil-dancers and the weird wild shriek of the devil-possessed just outside the gate.

What does it matter, after all? It has gone on for years; it will go on for years. Why make such a fuss about it?

God forgive us! God arouse us! Shame us out of our callousness! Shame us out of our sin!

-Amy Carmichael, 1906.

My goal by the time I graduate is to have read every available book by Amy Carmichael

From Things as They Are:

"God! fight we not within a cursed world,
Whose very air teems thick with leagued fiends--
Each word we speak has infinite effects--
Each soul we pass must go to heaven or hell--
And this our one chance through eternity
To drop and die, like dead leaves in the brake!
....
Be earnest, earnest, earnest; mad if thou wilt;
Do what thou dost as if the stake were heaven,
And that thy last deed ere the judgment day."
-Charles Kingsley, qtd. in Things as They Are, 4.

Somebody's going to get me for some kind of infringement...

Do Thou for me, O God the Lord,
Do Thou for me;
I need not toil to find the word
That carefully
Unfolds my prayer and offers it,
My God, to Thee.

It is enough that Thou wilt do,
And wilt not tire,
Wilt lead by cloud, all the night through
By light of fire,
Till Thou has perfected in me
Thy heart's desire.

O blessed be the love that bears
The burden now,
The love that frames our very prayers,
Well knowing how
To coin our gold; O God the Lord,
Do Thou, do Thou.

"Do Thou for Me"

I wrote before of a soldier being removed to another part of the field when he is wounded--to a field hospital, so to speak, not a shelf--and of how, as pain lessens, one may fight among the unseen forces, joining with the angels and all the powers of Good, joining with our Lord Himself, who ever liveth to make intercession.

But I have not found myself that illness makes prayer easier, nor do any of our family who have been ill tell me that they have found it so. Prayerfulness does not seem to be a flower of the spirit that grows of itself. When we are well perhaps we rather take it for granted that it does, as though what is sometimes called a "sick-bed" offered natural soil for that precious flower. I do not think that it does. A bed can be a place of dullness of spirit as well as of body, and prayer is, after all work--the most strenuous work in all the world. And yet it is our only way of joining the fighting force (we have declined the easy laid-aside cracked-china view of the matter). So what can we do about it?

One night, soon after neuritis had taken possession of me from shoulder-blade to finger-tips, I could no more gather myself up to pray than I could turn in bed without the help of the Lotus Bud, who was my faithful night-nurse. But I could read, and I opened on Psalm cix.

Do Thou for me, O God the Lord. Do what? It does not say. It just says, Do Thou for me.

And the prayer, so simple, so easy for a tired heart, had a delivering power. It delivered from the oppression of the enemy. "Now there was leaning on Jesus' bosom one of His disciples, whom Jesus loved"; it was like that.

And soon the prayer passed into the most restful kind of intercession, the only kind the ill can attain unto, for they cannot pray in detail and they may know little or nothing of the needs of their dearest. But He knows all, down to the smallest wish of the heart. So we do not need to coin our gold in words, we could not if we tried: we are far too tired for that; and He who knoweth our frame does not ask us to do anything so arduous: Do Thou for her, do Thou for him, do Thou for them, O God the Lord.

This word of peace had greatly eased my spirit, when a letter came from the Secretary of the Dohnavur Fellowship Invalids' League. She quoted from the letter of a Danish invalid too ill to pray as she longed to do: "This form of illness is very sad; but I am sure that God will learn His children in such times to have all their joy in God alone and not in the service for Him, not in their own forces. Of course you are thankful for these things also; but the heart of a child of God must be so, that God Himself is enough for it."

Was ever a deep truth more simply and beautifully spoken? Perhaps the word is meant for more than the ill. It is a word for all to whom He is the Best Beloved.

There was another night when, reading again in the Psalms, I discovered (I had not noticed it before) that the prayer, "Lord, all my desire is before Thee," was first prayed by a sick man: "Lord, all my desire is before Thee, and my groaning is not hid from Thee."

Next morning I was not able to write the usual note to my scattered family. (Before the accident I had usually had a few minutes with some of them at early morning tea between 6.30 and 7. After that interruption I sent them, when I could, a word which had fed me; and this grew into sharing my pot of manna with the larger family.) But the good angel of this peaceful room hung a picture of a bluebell wood on the front of the low chair on whose seat my feet rested. It is there now, a continual pleasure. The delicious green of young beech is seen against a pale sky; the blue of the bluebells rises like a softly murmured prayer ("Understand Thou my softly murmured prayer" is Rotherham's rendering of Psalm v.I), or like the silence of love that lays its desire before its Beloved and leaves it there. Perhaps the little Song of Content that came singing through the bluebell wood that morning may have something for others also, like the rose on the sweet-brier:

As the misty bluebell wood,
Very still and shadowy,
Does not seek for or compel
Several word from several bell,
But lifts up her quiet blue--
So all my desire is before Thee.

For the prayer of human hearts
In the shadow of the Tree,
Various as the various flowers,
Blown by wind and wet by showers,
Rests at last in silent love--
Lord, all my desire is before Thee.

"In the shadow of the Tree"; the daffodils, that came before the bluebells, danced in the blessed sunshine. We have had daffodil days. If now for a season we are set like the bluebells in a shadowy place, that shade can only be the shadow of the Tree. "I sat down under His Shadow with great delight, and His fruit was sweet to my taste." Do the words seem to rapturous to be quite true? O Lord, Thou knowest; Lord, all my desire is before Thee.

Another from Miss Carmichael

"As Glad and Merry as It Was Possible"

Nearly five hundred years ago Julian of Norwich wrote that when she was earnestly thinking of our Lord's suffering, and trying to see (as it were) His dying, "suddenly, He changed the look of His blessed Countenance. The changing of His blessed Countenance changed mine, and I was as glad and merry as it was possible. The brought our Lord merrily to my mind: Where is now any point of thy pain or of thy grief? And I was full merry." But this is only the beginning. It hath not entered into the heart to conceive the joy that is drawing nearer every day--the joy that shall be ours when we are where there will be no more withering or fear of withering.

"I understood that we be now, in our Lord's meaning, in His Cross with Him in His pains and His passion, dying; and we, willingly abiding in the same Cross with His help and His grace unto the last point, suddenly He shall change His Cheer to us, and we shall be with Him in Heaven. Betwixt that one and that other shall be no time, and then shall all be brought to joy. And thus said He in this Shewing: Where is now any point of thy pain or of thy grief? And we shall be full blessed." So she was "full merry." If it can be this now, what will it be when (as we trust, shortly) we shall see Him, and we shall speak face to face?

It seems to me clear beyond question that in the lives of God's beloved there are sometimes periods when the adversary is "given power to overcome." This power need never overhwelm the inner courts of the spirit, but it may press hard on the outworks of being. And so I have been asking that our dearest Lord may have the joy (surely it must be a joy to Him) of saying about each one of us, and about us all as a little company of His children: "I can count on him, on her, on them for anything. I can count on them for peace under any disappointment or series of disappointments, under any strain. I can trust them never to set limits, saying, "Thus far, and no farther." I can trust them not to offer the reluctant obedience of a doubtful faith, but to be as glad and merry as it is possible.

And all that begins in the gift of a great contentment.

I Will Renew Thee in My Love

As they say here at MABTS, this'll bless ya. It's from Miss Carmichael's Rose from Brier.

O little bird that sings
Long before the glad day springs,
What radiant victory
You show to me.

You sing of conquering faith,
And of life subduing death,
And of joy before the light
Has vanquished night.

God of the sweet bird-song,
Let us all be borne along
By this triumphant mirth
That is not of earth.

Foreseeing dawn, would we
Now exult melodiously,
And sing before the light
Has vanquished night.

"I Will Renew Thee in My Love"

But there are times when we feel too tired even to desire; nothing is left in us to be refreshed; virtue has gone out of us. Will it ever come back? Can fatigue annihilate that which used to be, that resilience that so often has saved us from collapse? To be wakened by pain long before we should awaken, in spite of all that has been done to give us sleep, is to know that feeling. At such times the infantile bird-song which faces this letter has been a solace.

From mid-January till the cares of a family become too insistent the magpie robin, a gay little bird in tidy black and white, sings before the dawn, sometimes as early as three o' clock. A long sustained sweetness suddenly breaks through the darkness, and drops of silver song are scattered everywhere. You lie listening gratefully, and your "Oh, how tired I am!" becomes of itself, "O little bird that sings"--which is at least happier than the other.

But not even the memory of that silvery sweetness can carry us through the day. Nothing but the very word of God made vital to the heart can do that. I wonder if this will do for another what it has done for me? The Septuagint rendering of Zephaniah iii. 17, "He will rest in His love," is, He will renew thee in His love. There is enchantment in that word. There is life. There is strength.

O God, renew us in Thy love to-day,
For our to-morrow we have not a care,
Who blessed our yesterday
Will meet us there.

But our to-day is all athirst for Thee;
Come in the stillness, O Thou heavenly Dew,
Come Thou to us--to me--
Revive, renew.

September, on the south-eastern coast of India, is a burnt-up month. Round about Dohnavur the earth is terra-cotta coloured and asks for the relief of low-growing green things; it can glare hotly when all that grows low is brown. The henna, within view of my window (henna is the camphire of the Song of Songs, "My Beloved is to me like a cluster of henna"), is then bare brown twip, the creamy, scented clusters are a mere memory; the little butterfly, caesalpinia, is a flicker of gold on unhappy stalks; frangipani, the temple flower, breaks out in strong blossom from a naked fat finger-stem, and the flame of the forest is all flame and no forest green.

But this year it is different, and this morning my chair was turned so that I could see into the enclosure upon which my room opens, and till the sun rose and made it too bright I feasted my eyes on the greenness. Never before have these eyes seen a green September. This year, the first time within living memory, not only are the greater trees, and of course all the palms, green (that is their happy custom), but the little henna is green, the gaiety of the caesalpinia is set in green, the temple-treee flowers are like pale stars in a green night, the gorgeous crimson of the forest flame glows bright from among its own gracious foliage. Rioting over a tangle of low bushes near my window the delicate large bells of the blue convolvulus call to the little sunbirds, and those lovely things, iridescent jewels in feathers, peck through the tube from the outside, poised in the air on tiny fluttering wings. Beside me is a fern-ball, lately achieved after many a vain essay; the mass of fragile lace is full of the whispers of woods and water. The unwonted beauty is because this year we have had rain during the hot weather; the sap is racing up every growing thing as though the thermometer did not register between 90 and 100 in the shade.

And all this sweet greenness and the dewy freshness of flowers is like a picture in colour, set to familiar words. Leaves and flowers, down to the least leaf-bud and flower-bud, are nourished by the living sap. They do not cause it to rise, or regulate its flow. They do not understand its mysterious power. But as it flows through them it revives them, renews them. We who are ill know that we could never do much to bring the sap of life to bear upon our souls. We may have helps (I have, and they are countless), or we may have none (some have very few); but whether we are set in families or are as lonely as a sparrow on a housetop--that friendliest of little birds who does not like to be alone anywhere--we know that we depend on something that is not of ourselves to keep us fresh and green. And we know that sometimes we are too spent even to pray for it.

We need not pray. There are times when all that is asked of us is just what is asked of the leaves and flowers and the fronds of the fern. They continue in the plant, and the sap flows up to them.

Continue ye in My love. The most tired of us can continue, stay there, be there--no words can be too simple to say what He means. Do not go away, He says. Why should we? How could we? Do we want to speak to Him? "He then lying on Jesus' breast saith unto Him." Are we too tired to speak at all? Be silent, then, in love. "Surely towards God silence becometh my sou; from Him is mine expectation," is Rotherham's rendering of Psalm lxii. I, 5. And as we are silent, letting our hearts rest in quietness in Him from whom is our expectation, He will cause the sap to rise. He will renew us in His love. And so, however weary the clogging flesh may be, we shall with through and we shall know,

Patience of comfort, peace and fortitude,
Drink where fresh waters flow,
Taste angels' food.

For loving, Thou dost love until the end;
O great and dear Renewer, we have proved
What Love Divine can spend
On its beloved.

The things we would least choose to have are round about us. But "In these things be not thrown down, and despair not; but stand evenly at the will of god, and suffer all things that cometh to thee, to the praising of our Lord Jesus Christ; for after winter cometh summer, and after even cometh day, and after tempest cometh clearness."

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This is for y'all; you know who you are. I hope it's timely.