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Winter of the soul..

It was a bad winter

The wind, bitterly cold.

Icy fingers of hopelessness,

Ever reaching for the soul.

Against the windows,

High and white, the snow

Hardly allowing any light,

As day is swallowed up by night.

Oh, but there inside the house,

Upon the hearth, a lovely sight.

For there sat He, in quiet repose,

The One who keeps the flame aglow.

Forgiving eyes and nail scarred hands,

A face ravaged by pain and sacrifice,

He feeds the flame

Of the soul's desire

And though the cold with cruel breath,

Sought the flame to extinquish, yet,

It could not, for this is no ordinary house,

You see, no natural scene nor element.

For the One who keeps the flame aglow,

And melts the ice of hopelessness,

Is Jesus. And the house?

It is my soul.

"Snowy Cabin" background picture by the "Painter of Light"~Thomas Kincaid; man, woman, and Jesus tubes by artists unknown to me at this time :o/

"snow" dhtml script by Kurts Free Scripts

"Child of My love, lean hard,

And let Me feel the pressure of thy care;

I know thy burden, child. I shaped it;

Poised it in Mine Own hand; made no proportion

In its weight to thine unaided strength,

For even as I laid it on, I said,

'I shall be near, and while she leans on Me,

This burden shall be Mine, not hers;

So shall I keep My child within the circling arms

Of My Own love.' Here lay it down, nor fear

To impose it on a shoulder which upholds

the government of worlds. Yet closer come:

Thou art not near enough. I would embrace thy care;

So I might feel My child reposing on My breast.

Thou lovest Me? I knew it. Doubt not then;

But Loving Me, lean hard."

~Mrs. Charles E. Cowman~

We are separated from one another by an unbridgeable gulf

of otherness and strangeness which resists all our attempts to

overcome it by means of natural association or emotional or

spiritual union. There is no way from one person to another.

However loving and sympathetic we try to be, however sound our

psychology, however frank and open our behavior, we cannot

penetrate the incognito of the other man, for there are no

direct relationships, not even between soul and soul. Christ

stands between us, and we can only get into touch with our

neighbors through Him.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945),

The Cost of Discipleship [1964]