Friday, Jul. 02, 2004 - 8:30 p.m.

A Summer Evening-poem

SONG 7.---A Summer Evening.

(by Isaac Watts)

I.

How fine has the day been, how bright was the sun,

How lovely and joyful the course that he run,

Though he rose in a mist when his race he begun,

And there follow'd some droppings of rain!

But now the fair traveller's come to the West,

His rays are all gold, and his beauties are best,

He paints the sky gay as he sinks to his rest,

And foretels a bright rising again.

II.

Just such is the christian: his course he begins,

Like the sun in a mist, when he mourns for his sins,

And melts into tears: then he breaks out and shines,

And travels his heav'nly way;

But when he comes nearer to finish his race,

Like a fine setting sun he looks richer in grace,

And gives a sure hope at the end of his days,

Of rising in brighter array.

-------------------

This is the last poem from my Thunderstorm tape, and the hardest to find on the internet. I used to write things down on scraps of paper or in notebooks. Now I put them here.

The following is a quote from a book. It was written by someone younger than I, but the writer was attributing it to an old lawyer defending a man in a murder trial. "As an older (person) I am prone to ponder matters in the light of death in a way that you are not. I am like a traveler descended from Mars who looks down in astonishment at what passes here. And what I see is the same human frailty passed from generation to generation. What I see is again and again the same sad human frailty. We hate one another; we are the victims of irrational fears. And there is nothing in the stream of human history to suggest we are gong to change this."

I felt like this when watching Good Morning, America this morning. As is their custom since we started losing soldiers in Iraq, they were showing the names and faces of some of our guys killed over there. I am not a Democrat who hates anything connected with Bush and the war. I am not a dove. I fully support the President in the need to put an end to terrorism. I know men must die to preserve and protect America. And sometimes it is for others, like in Europe in the Second World War. But I would like to end this. Not just pull out but end it decisively and then think of ourselves. Could it be possible to isolate our country from the world? Probably not. Too many who want to profit from international trade and enjoy international amusements. And do we as a country even have a worth to protect? I know there have always been worthless, no-goods who have leeched on the great country we live in, and there always will be, but there seems to be so many of them, and they are not worth even one of the lives of our men in Iraq.

9-11 was a terrible thing but maybe we should have just closed our borders and corralled up as the wagon trains used to when danger came. I don't have any good answers to these thoughts, but more and more I see why You told the Israelites to kill all the people when they came into the land You had given them. A country can only live in peace when it has a single vision, and a single leader. And that leader can never be a man, it must be You. You have always had the answers, and You have always known it can never happen this side of Heaven, haven't you? And yet You keep giving us one more chance to do it right.

EE's devotional

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