My prompt to begin this blog just now is to encourage all who may stop by for a reminder–or perhaps to hear for the first time–that a certain gift of peace bequeathed by the Prince of Peace some 2000 years ago is still available—even in such a time as this.
I invite you to pause here for whatever brief rest my posts may provide in the (real) existential battle of battles, because it is ultimately good that overcomes evil even though evil often seems bigger and more powerful.
Consider a few lessons from nature, for example, how tender seedlings grow to towering redwoods and how a certain little bird perched on a frozen branch still warbled some hopeful message in “the dregs of winter,” as poet Thomas Hardy suggests in his poem, “The Darkling Thrush”:
…So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware
Or perhaps in some mind-boggling epiphany of a moment in a physics class or some other experience you became aware of the power in each tiny, invisible-to-the-naked-eye atom.
So take heart.
For even in this time into which we were born, you and I, too, have some message of hope to broadcast to those who, like the poet coming upon that little thrush, might also feel there is little cause for “carolings,” let alone respite, amid what would smother our peace today. If we let it.
Whether clad in mortal or immortal armor, on the ground or in the spirit, we can offer prayers to sustain and restrain and anthems and hallelujahs to raise high flags of thanksgiving, truth, comfort, guidance, and wisdom–while we yet may, as we may.
Welcome.
Be encouraged.
Be comforted.
Carry on.
~~~~~
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Respite for the Remnant 