The man pictured here is named Bob, he is a friend of mine. This picture was taken in a courtroom where he and his sister looked on as the trial proceeded against the man who murdered Bob's mother.
It is hard to imagine anything in life much greater in horror than to hear the blood chilling news that he and his sister had to endure. I worked with him at Teen Challenge where he supervised, disciplined, counseled and befriended adult men seeking freedom from addiction. His expertise in working with the men kept me in a constant state of admiration. His ability to control and demand compliance from even the most vicious of men, while loving them and gaining their respect was a gifting that could only come from God. When I read the first few lines of the following quote, I immediately thought of him.

 "David's life and history, as written for us in those Psalms of his, I consider to be the truest emblem ever given of a man's moral progress and warfare here below. 

All earnest souls will ever discern in it the faithful struggle of an earnest human soul towards what is good and best. A struggle often baffled, sorely baffled, at times down into an entire wreck; yet a struggle never ended; ever with tears, repentance, true unconquerable purpose, begun anew. Poor human nature! Is not a man's walking in truth always that: 'a succession of falls'? Man can do no other. In this wild element of Life, he has to struggle onwards; now fallen, deep abased; and ever with tears, repentance, with bleeding heart, he has to rise again, struggle again still onwards. That his struggle be a faithful unconquerable one: that is the question of questions." Thomas Carlyle.

  This time of year my garden beauty is just bursting into a riot of color and green. The spring growth reminds me of the new eyes we have when we first begin our new walk of faith and new introduction to Christ. I ran across these writings that describe one's impressions of conversion.

Somehow I was changed, like the quote --

"His lips drink water but his heart drinks wine." E.E. Cummings.

  I felt like I looked around with fresh eyes, and saw commonplace things as powerfully as I did for the first time.

It was like I had the perception of an infant or a child; there was a sense of wonder and awe. It was like my eyes adjusted for the light: from blacks and greys to full color. Greens were greener, blues were deeper.

A presence Falls quiet on my soul, stillness appreciated, living without the epic, but finding under the surface an alluring simplicity.  

Every moment a promise, not to be found slipping through my fingers, but grasped, possessed, enjoyed.

The doors of perception swung wide-open calling for investigation, exploration, new horizons, and a quest into the vast unknown; New dawning’s, revelations. New sensations of hope, and a heart quieting peace all permeated with a deep elation and joy. Leaving the shallows for deeper currents. James Martineau. 

This piece speaks about those who are sensitive to the things in this life and learn from them and walk in deeper faith because of it. It is such an encouragement for me to slow down to see and hear God in all of life. 

  " There are some to whom the tearful atmosphere of this world early brings the dew and sprinkling of regeneration; and to whom, thenceforth, no event is simply physical, no experience chiefly external; but an inner fire takes up and kindles whatever is offered, and is sure to be nurtured by it into a purer and diviner flame. To such souls every element of life is sacred, and every momentary change is rich; and the transient brush of sunshine that but touches the grass and flits away, will show them more than the longest and the most staring summer-day can give to the shrewd open eye. Whatever passes before them becomes a part of them: their tablet of the past is not the memorandum-book of business and affairs, but the illuminated calendar of the affections, where the names are holy and the days are bright. The legends they have to tell are not superficial anecdotes that fools can understand as well as wise; but snatches from the great drama of reality, a chorus flung out from its chords of joy or grief, moving and significant to those only who know it as a whole.

Where there is in the soul this living mood of watchfulness and response, it needs no large knowledge to give the finest wisdom, no length of days to enrich the heart with the deepest experience. Let the mind be only pure and tender with the love of God, large with his presence, and free in the quietude of faith, and its faculties move upon the slightest hint, and find more in an ordinary year than sharp-sightedness and sound-headedness alone could discern from beneath their knitted brows in half a century." James Martineau.  

The following quote about our thoughts of loved-ones that have died is so insightful and tender, written by Washington Irving.

“The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal - every other affliction to forget; but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open - this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude. Where is the mother who would willingly forget the infant that perished like a blossom from her arms, though every recollection is a pang? Where is the child that would willingly forget the most tender of parents, though to remember be but to lament? Who, even in the hour of agony, would forget the friend over whom he mourns? Who, even when the tomb is closing upon the remains of her he most loved, when he feels his heart, as it were, crushed in the closing of its portal, would accept of consolation that must be bought by forgetfulness? No, the love which survives the tomb is one of the noblest attributes of the soul. If it has its woes, it has likewise its delights; and when the overwhelming burst of grief is calmed into the gentle tear of recollection, when the sudden anguish and the convulsive agony over the present ruins of all that we most loved are softened away in pensive meditation on all that it was in the days of its loveliness - who would root out such a sorrow from the heart? Though it may sometimes throw a passing cloud over the bright hour of gaiety, or spread a deeper sadness over the hour of gloom, yet who would exchange it even for the song of pleasure, or the burst of revelry? No, there is a voice from the tomb sweeter than song. There is a remembrance of the dead to which we turn even from the charms of the living. Oh, the grave! The grave! It buries every error - covers every defect - extinguishes every resentment! From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections.” 

The Rainy Day

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;

It rains, and the wind is never weary;

The vine still clings to the moldering wall,

But at every gust the dead leaves fall,

And the day is dark and dreary.

 My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;

It rains, and the wind is never weary;

My thoughts still cling to the moldering past,

But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,

And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;

Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;

Thy fate is the common fate of all,

Into each life some rain must fall,

Some days must be dark and dreary.

Henry W. Longfellow.