Life A Stream

       Life bears us on like the stream of a mighty river. Our boat at first glides down the narrow channel, through the playful murmuring of the little brook and the winding of its grassy boarders. The trees shed their blossoms over young heads: the flowers on the brink seem to offer themselves to the young hands. We are happy in hope, and we grasp eagerly at the beauties around us; but the stream hurries on, and still our hands are empty. Our course in youth and manhood is along a wider and deeper flood, amid objects more striking and magnificent. We are animated at the moving pictures, and enjoyments and industry passing us; we are excited at some short-lived disappointment. The stream bears us on; and our joys and griefs are alike left behind us. We may be shipwrecked; but we cannot be delayed. Whether rough or smooth, the river hastens to its home, till the roar of the ocean is in our ears, and the tossing of the waves is beneath our feet, and the land lessens from our eyes, and the floods are lifted up around us; and we take our leave of earth and its inhabitants until, of our future voyage, there is no witness save the Infinite and Eternal. Bishop Herber

"For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him." Colossians 1:16 (New International Version)

 "Lord Reign In Me" by Brenton Brown

Heaven A Locality

Outer space

       I am at a loss to understand why there should be difficulty in receiving the idea of heaven a locality - a fact of materiality, within the domain of physics, equally positive with the existence of Jupiter or Saturn, Venus or Uranus. The telescope, it is most true, has given wondrous revelations of the magnitude and the magnificence of God's glorious universe; but even that has not been able to reveal the secrets of the milky way, nor to calculate the distances of the nearest of the fixed stars, as the astronomer will tell you. But when we come to think, as is most probably true in fact, that with all the wonders thus laid open to our view - and they are most stupendous - we stand as yet but within the vestibule of God's great temple. Like Newton, we saunter along picking up here and there a pebble from the shore, the great ocean of truth meanwhile lying all unexplored beyond us. I doubt not that, could we but see them, as in prophetic vision, we should behold myriads upon myriads of shining orbs peopling the infinitudes of space, and of which the most accurate of all the sciences has not conceived the most remote idea. Inasmuch, then, as we as yet know nothing in comparison of what yet remains to be revealed to the eye of science, how dare we presume to say that the idea of heaven as a locality is a Utopian figment of the imagination - a mere poetic creation? We have picked up a sand or two from the beach, and say these are all there is of them! We have become slightly acquainted with the wonders of this, our own solar universe, and from that premise attempt the impossible feat of proving a negative, predicating the non-existence of any other!

       Most assuredly, since God has found place for the worlds we do see, He is of might sufficient to the finding of room in the vast depths of space for the heaven or heavens which at present we do not see? Rev. W. H. Cooper, D. D.

"The Only Scars In Heaven" sung by Casting Crowns.

Unity Of Mind

        Holy Spirit rule and foot rule have nothing to do with each other. The same light that comes out of a dew-drop comes out of the sun. The smallest bird that trills its infinitesimal melody utters occasional notes that would blend with the voluminous progressions of the grandest oratorio, or that would even chime in the anthem of the heavenly host praising God and singing, "Glory to God in the highest." And as the little note of the bird fits the splendid symphony of the angel-choir, so that is still thought everywhere, mind is mind in both worlds, the sea shell yet hums the murmur of the sea whence it sprang, the younger star still moves in the orbit it learned while one with the parent star from which it was born, God and man think in the same vernacular, the Father and His children understand each other, the hills and the mountains are divine thoughts done in stone, and in the heavens the interpreting mind of man calmly fronts and steadily reads the meaning of God, and in the scintillant paragraphs of the star-dotted sky, with a divine genius, spells out thought that lay eternal in the great Mind before ever He said, "Let there be light." Charles H. Winthrop Packard

All things yet shall work together, and so
working, orb in one,
As the sun draws back its sunbeams when
the dial-day is done;
All things yet shall gather roundly, and
unite, and shape, and climb,
Into truth's great golden unit, in the ripe
result of time.

"May the Circle Be Unbroken" sung 
by The Tehillah Ensemble

How to Deal With The Thorn

Crown of Thorns Symbol from Christian Clip Art Review

        Paul had a great many successes; his splendid genius gave him great power over men everywhere. Heathen cities were turned upside down at his coming. The most learned and influential men waited on his eloquence with admiration. Kings and governors trembled at his passionate appeals. His devotion, too, was rewarded with marvelous visions of spiritual beauty, and Paul says that, lest he should become puffed up by all these triumphs, there was given unto him "a thorn in the flesh." There have been many curious ideas with regard to what that thorn was. Some commentators have thought it was a scolding wife, though the more common opinion is that Paul was a bachelor. A late writer of great note thinks it was a malarial fever; it is a case in which one man's guess is as' good as another, but the way Paul dealt with it is the interesting point. He earnestly besought God, again and again, that he might get rid of it. This is the answer that he received from heaven: 

"My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness." "Most gladly, therefore, " said Paul, " will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me." 2 Corinthians 12:9

To the unknown saints...

 With golden letters set in brave array
Throughout the Church's record of the 
year,
The great names of historic saints appear,
Those ringing names, that, as a trumpet, play
Uplifting music o'er a sordid way,
And sound high courage to our earth-
dulled ear;
But, underneath those strains, I seem to
hear
The silence of the saints that have no day.

Martyrs blood-red, and trodden souls, care-
gray,
In hierarchal pride no place they boast;
No candles born for them where pilgrims
pray,
No haloes crown their dim and countless
host;
And yet-the leaven of their humble sway,
Unrecognized, unguessed, avails the most.

by Kathleen Perry

sung at Shenandoah Christian Music Camp
"How Can I Keep From Singing?"