One Solitary Life

Averil and I drove to Windsor on Saturday to avoid the bad weather that was on the way for Southern Ontario on Sunday. The result was that I missed church at Lansing on Sunday which I'm sad about because I love our church and really miss everything when I'm not there. But church in Windsor was good and I got in on their potluck Christmas lunch afterward. One thing I really liked about being here was getting to hear my Dad preach again and, in particular, being reminded in his sermon about the poem One Solitary Life.

He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant. He grew up in another village, where he worked in a carpenter shop until he was 30. Then, for three years, he was an itinerant preacher.

He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family or owned a home. He didn't go to college. He never lived in a big city. He never traveled 200 miles from the place where he was born. He did none of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but himself.

He was only 33 when the tide of public opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied him. He was turned over to his enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves. While he was dying, his executioners gambled for his garments, the only property he had on earth. When he was dead, he was laid in a borrowed grave, through the pity of a friend.

Twenty centuries have come and gone, and today he is the central figure of the human race. I am well within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned--put together--have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as that one, solitary life.

Check out the movie version online here. (or at http://www.onesolitarylifemovie.com/)

O Give Thanks

Give thanks for simply things today;
A sturdy roof, our daily bread,
A kettle singing on the fire,
And seasoned wood piled in the shed.

Give thanks for beauty, crimson leave
Against a sky of gentian blue,
For fruitfulness and harvestings
For sudden song and laughter, too.

For health and strength to do our work,
For comradeship along the way,
For life, the greatest gift of all,
We keep in gratitude this day.

Count your blessings
Thanksgiving comes to us each year.
Some pray, some feast, some rest.
I fold my hands and bow my head
And count the ways I'm blest.

-Lucille Crumley (found the bulletin at my parent's church this weekend)

Poem

But often, in the world's most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life:
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us - to know
Whence our lives come and where they go.