The Streetpoet

It is always good to look back and see how far we’ve come and what God has brought us through. But it’s oh, so fun with children to see how they’ve grown! I found these shots of the boys from January 2007:

‘Tonight I close my eyes and see
A strange procession passing me –
The years before I saw your face
Go by me with a wistful grace;
They pass, the sensitive, shy years,
As one who strives to dance, half blind with tears.

The years went by and never knew
That each one brought me nearer you;
Their path was narrow and apart
And yet it led me to your heart –
Oh, sensitive, shy years, oh, lonely years,
That strove to sing with voices drowned in tears.’

As I am thinking “How fast this year has gone by!” I am reminded of something Peter and I read together on our honeymoon. C.S.Lewis wrote in his book “Reflections on the Psalms”:

“When the poet of Psalm 84 said “For one day in Thy courts is better than a thousand”, he doubtless meant that one day there was better than a thousand elsewhere. I find it impossible to exclude while I read this the thought which, so far as I know, the Old Testament never quite reaches. It is there in the New, beautifully introduced not by laying a new weight on old words but more simply adding to them. In Psalm 90 it had been said that a thousand years were to God like a single yesterday; in 2Peter…we read not only that a thousand years are as one day but also that “one day is as a thousand years”. The Psalmist only meant, I think, that God was everlasting, that His life was infinite in time. But the epistle takes us out of the time-series altogether. As nothing outlasts God, so nothing slips away from Him into a past. The later conception…of the timeless as an eternal present has been achieved. Ever afterwards, for some of us, the “one day” in God’s courts which is better than a thousand, must carry a double meaning. The Eternal may meet us in what is, by our present measurements, a day, or (more likely) a minute or a second; but we have touched what is not in any way commensurable with lengths of time, whether long or short. Hence our hope finally to emerge, if not altogether from time (that might not suit our humanity) at any rate from the tyranny, the unlinear poverty, of time, to ride it not to be ridden by it, and so to cure that always aching wound (“the wound man was born for”) which mere succession and mutability inflict on us, almost equally when we are happy and when we are unhappy. For we are so little reconciled to time that we are even astonished at it. “How he’s grown!” we exclaim, “How time flies!” as though the universal form of our experience were again and again a novelty. It is as strange as if a fish were repeatedly surprised at the wetness of water. And that would be strange indeed; unless of course the fish were destined to become, one day, a land animal.”

Time has seemed to speed up for me. Maybe it’s adulthood. I remember when time would pass so slowly, but then, I did not as a child have much of a grasp on it.

My prayers for this year are many, but mainly that God would continue to make our boy’s hearts tender and speak His truth to them. That we will glorify God in all we do and say, and learn to enjoy Him more.

We hadn’t seen Peter Freeland since we were engaged! What a wonderful time we had catching up and reminiscing together! We went on a hike to Sage Ranch which turned out to be an all afternoon tromp. Tea time when we arrived home was cozy and lasagna dinner at Mom and Dad’s that evening was wonderful! A grand Saturday indeed! Hope to catch you again before you leave the States, Peter!

This reminded me of Jerome begging Daddy to take him out exploring on a hike or hunt:

“I am the Most Wise Baviaan, saying in most wise tones,
‘Let us melt into the landscape – just us two by our lones.’
People have come – in a carriage – calling. But Mummy is there…
Yes, I can go if you take me – Nurse says she don’t care.
Let’s go up to the pigsties and sit on the farmyard rails!
Let’s say thing to the bunnies, and watch ’em skitter their tails!
Let’s – oh, anything, daddy, so long as it’s you and me,
And going truly exploring, and not being in til tea!
Here’s your boots (I’ve brought ’em), and here’s your cap and stick,
And here’s your pipe and tobacco. Oh, come along out of it – quick.”

~Rudyard Kipling