This Gift From Heaven |
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He came to us, this gift from heaven, | |||||||
And how our hearts rejoiced to see the blessed hand of God | |||||||
Revealed to even such as we. | |||||||
We would raise him; O so carefully, | |||||||
And nurture him we vowed, | |||||||
And teach him faith and loving Christ, | |||||||
And all the things to make of him a man to please our Lord above, | |||||||
And do his family proud. | |||||||
And we tried; O God, we tried. | |||||||
No, not always right or wise. | |||||||
Sometimes erring as humans often do, | |||||||
But did you have to take him from us? | |||||||
Did we fail him so much, or You? | |||||||
Not so dear ones, not so. | |||||||
From the start or err he left the womb; | |||||||
I had my purposes for him. | |||||||
Think you I could not have saved him from any human lapse of care, | |||||||
Or ought of earths pernicious maladies? | |||||||
He was mine from the reaches of eternity, | |||||||
And now both mine and yours together. | |||||||
He’ll be safe with me, for purposes of eternity yet to be, | |||||||
The ends to which I lent him to the earth, | |||||||
And placed him in your care, have been fulfilled, | |||||||
And now I take him back, | |||||||
To keep him for you, until you come to us at last. | |||||||
The sorrow you feel, you share with me. | |||||||
I too, gave up a son, and suffered pain no less than you. | |||||||
The things my creatures suffer now; | |||||||
I have suffered all for them, you see. | |||||||
The fellowship of suffering is the sweetest of all to me. | |||||||
And, when the glands of grief aweary have left at last their flooding, | |||||||
And sorrows symbols yet replaced with anguish, unexpressed as un-assuaged, | |||||||
Coursing deep within the breast; | |||||||
Through labyrinthing passageways of pain. | |||||||
Just remember I am with you, sharing the pain, | |||||||
Soothing the spirit, deeper than the pain. | |||||||
Sculpting through the pain; your own eternal spirits. | |||||||
Bring to me your braking bleeding hearts, | |||||||
Know the healing shaping touch of my own skillful hands, | |||||||
Through which you too like the dear treasure we share, | |||||||
Will be to the people of earth a radiant shaft of the glory of God | |||||||