God Can

If God can do so much with a little bit of slush,

Tell me, what can He do with a soul?

The world that was gray and black and brown

(Although on these colors I do not frown)

If God can turn it white, yes whiter than down,

Tell me, what can He do to a soul?

 

Heaven has a way of making things bright,

Greater light by day, and lesser light by night.

Heaven is the source of all purity and light;

Let heaven into your soul.

And see what the Creator, the glorious Emancipator,

Can do for your ever-living soul.  –eab, 11/71

 

                               

Penned in Akron, Ohio while teaching at the Wesleyan Methodist School in Kenwood.

 

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He Came at Night

Heaven had such luster, such delight,

While far below on the footstool of God,

The absence of beauty, the absence of light,

Ruled over river and rock and sod,

And over plants and over creeping things,

And animals with hoofs, and animals with wings.

 

For thousands of years it had been thus;

Day constantly pursued by the night.

Twilight toning to shades of dusk –

The way to walk again lost from sight –

Man floundering in murk and mire,

With only here and there a tiny fire.

 

The Creator saw His creatures’ needs;

Saw the contrast of heaven and earth,

Saw, through darkness, the wound that bleeds,

Saw the man in shadow’s firm girth;

And seeing He felt, seeing He cared,

And destined Heaven’s Light to be shared.

 

Christ left the sight of eternal morn,

Departed in mutual, Sovereign will.

And arrived at night, Ah, time forlorn;

Time that drags for the sad and the ill.

Oh, what Providence, that the Prince of Light,

Should arrive on earth in the middle of the night.

 

And the night to which He came was more,

Than a mere dome of black o’re head.

Sin had blackened the human shore

(Far worse than oil slicks of modern dread)

And proceeded to ink the rest of the race,

From the pagan’s hut to the civilized place.

 

All this night, all this visionless foul,

Christ, the Illustrious, met full of force.

He brightened them both (Don’t ask me how.)

And challenging, changed the nature, the course,

Of the darkness, the ruin, the blackness of sin,

Both outward and inward, the problems of men!

 

So as beautiful stars light the winter’s sky,

Remember that Christ came from brilliance – to none.

Sacrificing for man, that man might glorify

The Light, the only self-brilliant One.

And remember, heaven shared its gift of light,

In the middle of Bethlehem‘s, Ah, the world’s dark night.  – eab, 12/14/79

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Lines of Age

Be not angry with aging’s signs;

They’re but mile posts of life.

The fine, quaint lettering, interpret not with sting,
Nor quail from those neat lines

Etched by time’s trusty knife.

 

God in benevolent love,

Loving the yet unborn race,

(Imagine loving unknown, babies and adults full-grown;

Only that God-like feeling from above

Enables man to care for an exposed face!)

 

God could love, lovingly He did,

What only God would do;

He made man so outward signs would show

When life began to reach its “mid,”

The Creator thus hinted what He knew.

 

He could’ve made man and his mate,

To stay lifelong young,

To be in the prime all the time,

With no warnings of the date,

When death’s tolling had begun.

 

Instead, He planned that gradually,

With force, man’s body would signal

An ultimate truth – the passing of youth.

Signs an individual would see,

Inward, outward, very hard to make null.

 

God knew we would rush madly apace,

Be engrossed in buying and selling,

Be coming and going, “to-ing and fro-ing.”

So in wisdom, He planned the face,

As our clock for time-telling.

 

Be glad then for lines that planted

The crow’s feet and smile’s relief.

Your knowing brow signals the NOW,

Of life’s evening rays so well slanted,

And knowing – there need not be grief.  -eab, 7/80

 

written in Friendsville, Tennessee

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