A Prayer for Thanksgiving .... 

Dear Lord Jesus, Yours is the Name above every name. At Your name all creatures -- winged creatures, swimming creatures, singing birds, beasts that walk on the earth, and your human creatures join in the dance of worship, standing on tip-toe before your throne. We breathe your spirit and with joyful voices give you praise. Yours is the glory and the power and the majesty forever and ever. To you we bring our deepest hopes. To you we send our requests for change in this your world. To you we cry for help and to you we smile in thanksgiving.

Dear Lord Jesus, the season of harvest is past. We sing, "All is safely gathered in, ere the winter storms begin. God our maker doth provide for our wants to be supplied. Come to God’s own temple come; raise the song of harvest home."  You have given us showers of blessing, gifts beyond our imagining. We can hardly grumble that you have not blessed us on this journey to the Promised Land. We are grateful and give you thanks for the blessings of harvest and home, of church and family, of food and clothing and shelter. Thankful for all your gifts, we ask for grateful hearts, to serve you faithfully all our days of this pilgrim journey.

Bless all your children this day. Help us to be blessings to the hungry, the poor, and the distressed. Send hope to the despairing and healing to the suffering. And hear every prayer. Rejoice every heart. We ask in your name, the Name above every name, and we pray this sacred prayer…  Pray the Lord's Prayer.

from the prayers of Willard Spencer

Angel's Song.

The bones of the ground would quake ever so slightly, the grass and leaves shiver, the hearts of the Saints would leap and sinners tremble at it's clarion call. Now it was silent. Held fast by disuse, lashed with the silk-silver of heedless spiders, the sound of the old bell had not echoed over the hills for times and half times, it would seem, an apocalypse ago.

Pity, to have so great a song to sing and no one to loose it . . . Angel's song wrapped human silence.

Are you singing your best song? Nay, not just "yours", for all good songs are but echoes of the one grand harmony. Does God's music sound clearly from your life and lips or is the song muted by disuse, lashed by the flimsiness of your own will and ways?

"Loose our best songs Father, on this land. Let the bones quake, the leaves shiver. May the hearts of the Saints rejoice and sinners tremble at its clarion call."

Light and Warmth,

Bill

The Frost

The Beauty of Frost.

Does the frost have a life of its own? Of course it has. A few years ago we lived in a house on a hill. On wood-fire mornings in October we would look out to see if the frost had come. First we would see it along the banks of the creek at the base of the hill. Then, day to day, the frost would edge up the hill until it peered in our window panes and crackled on the cold stone of the rock garden.

Frost has a beauty all its own. Have you seen the sparkle of street lights reflected on the gem stones of frost? Have you not traced (with your vision) the moonlit patterns of crystal on your window pane? Hunter's moon is frost's light.

The frost comes asking questions. What about the year? Has the passing brought you closer to the frost's creator? What about the winter? Are you prepared for the slackened light? The frozen breath? Have you a supply of wood? A hearth fire? A haven beyond soul chill?

The frost has a life of its own and brings, in its own time, beauty to behold and questions we should answer.

Blessings, Bill

An end for everything.

The sparrow returns to her nest. The sun sets in the west. The river flows to the sea. Not only does there seem to be an ordering, but an end, a point of completion. It is so with the flux and flow of inanimate nature. And even the animals live and die in their cycle...a completion, a true end. Shoot an arrow in the air and it will trace a course to it's proper end.

"So for us, O Lord...our true end, our completion. Reveal to us not only the ordering of our days, our daily toil and daily bread, but the end of the journey. We cannot find it by ourselves. And we only, of all Your creatures, resist and refuse our given goal.

"Bring us, Lord, our hearts and minds and spirits, before You, burdens left behind, doubts and fears aside. Bring us before You in utter astonishment and utter joy. There may we find the end and purpose appointed for us. Gather our restless hearts unto Thee, secure in Your love, safe in the shadow of Your wings, living our days before You, our highest end. Amen"

Blessings,

Bill

Hebrews 12:1-13

The stands of the athletic field are filled with witnesses. They are cheering the runners who compete in the race. Those in the stands have completed their race and now they encourage those who are still in the competition. You and I are the runners, still in the race of life. We are advised to throw off whatever attitude, evil, or habit that hinders our running. Lighten the load. Train for the race. Then onto the track and into the lane! Look for the goal! Look for the tape that marks the ending. Look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of the race of faith. The crowd roars. We look to the lap we are running. Let us run with patience the race given us, (which is not necessarily the one we choose), and run with joy, by faith, as did the Lord who was faithful even unto death. Think about him and do not grow weary of the journey.

Light and Warmth,

Bill

Living is a thing you do

now or never, 

which do you?

As eternity 

is reckoned,

there's a lifetime

in a second.

He that lets

the small things bind

him,

leaves the great 

undone behind him.

Grooks by Piet Hein

Friends, here are three of the over ten thousand grooks written during his lifetime.  He was a philosopher-poet, a mathematician, designer, and a world level scientist. During WW II he was a soldier of the Danish secret army that opposed the Nazi occupation. There are fine levels of thought and humor in the little poems.  Enjoy them.  Look for more on-line if you like.  

Blessings,

Bill