To God Be The Glory - Amen! (TGBTGA) by Glynis M. Belec

Wednesday will be the fourth anniversary of my mother's crossing over to that better place. She died a glorious, pain free death surrounded by her family - just the way she wanted it. Today I was thinking about her and I was looking through my Bible. To my surprise I came across this lovely poem that Mom had in her possession.  Mom loved poetry and could recite everything from memory from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha to The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. I am pretty sure that Mom learned this untitled poem when she was in the service during the war. According to the story, it was found in the pocket of a dead soldier:

They say you will not come again
But I can always hear
Your voice in silence and in song
And feel you ever near
They say that you have passed beyond
Unto the land supreme
But I can always call you back
Into the land of dream
For death is but a gateway
To the Great Reality
A new beginning not an end
Of human destiny
Love is all and life goes on
In spite of grief and pain
But deep within my heart
I know that we shall meet again.

We thought that Mom had taken that poem with her to the grave but Dad found it in a drawer shortly after her death. We were pretty happy to find it because it was a special poem to her. She would often recite it to friends who had lost a loved one. Mom did not know Jesus until two days before she died. Now, as a bit of a tribute to that wonderful reason to celebrate I want to add the following:

But now that you are in the land
Called Great Reality
And seeing Jesus face to face
For all eternity
I know that you are free from pain
And resting from your race
One day I will see you there
And rejoice at God's good grace!

TGBTGA...Miss you mom! xx

Colourful Time – Lawrence

Once more, the colourful time of year arrives. The trees and hedgerows are blazing with reds and oranges, yellows and golds. We are in awe of nature and sing our praises to the Creator. It is a time of glory and we marvel, as we always do at this time of year, at the magnificence of creation.

However, as thinking human beings, the edge is taken off this season of fall because, in the back of our minds, we know that this astounding beauty is the precursor of winter. We marvel at the beauty of fall while being unable to enjoy it fully, knowing that it heralds trees’ bare limbs, long cold nights, and the short, harsh days of winter’s onset.

We are not fully able to enjoy this amazing autumn season because it is taken up with anxiety and dread of the coming winter—a winter season extended by our fear of unknown and untold possibilities. Unlike our pets who take every moment as it comes, we look ahead into the time of what is not yet and imagine the winter horrors that await us.

This takes a lot of energy away from our delight in the present moment; we spend time worrying about the future thus causing ourselves anxiety long before the actual happening, only to find when the time arrives, the imagined event is often not as bad as we anticipated.

It is good to be prepared for the storms of winter—the hydro outages, accidents and black-outs—but the point of being prepared, I think, is to take away worry because we have done all we can to ready ourselves for any emergency.

So, let us do all that needs to be done to ready ourselves for the unpredictable winter, then put aside worrying and fretting about what might happen and enjoy this present and stunning fall moments.

These moments God has given us and they will not return again, except in photographs, memories and the written word, and in our praise and thanks to the Creator for this wonderful world where we live.

www.judithlawrence.ca
http://welshcakesshortstories.blogspot.com