On occasion, or occasionally for an occasion, I feel the urge to to jot down a bit of poetry - whether it is is to commemorate an event, or I simply have a line running through my head that needs a bit more development.
The story of Sonja, my duckling, is an example of the former - in May of 2011, I discovered a lone duckling in the parking lot of a Dairy Queen, and as the poor wee thing would not survive the cool night without her mother, who was long gone, I brought her home and placed her under a heat lamp in a box that was currently devoid of the oranges it once held, and I took time to cuddle and comfort her in the days that followed. If you are familiar with Sergei Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf," you may remember Peter's friend the duck was named Sonja. One morning, after nearly two months under my care, my child was gone - most likely to the river, where we often went down to play and dig up leeches and water insects and snails. I never saw her again. Incidentally, her head was turning green, which is a rather bad sign for a female (indeed, an indication she was not a female at all). I shall soon post the poem about Sonja's life that I wrote as sequel to her "birth" poem.
"The Wanderer's Prayer" is an example of the latter - where I had some ideas floating around in my head, and maybe even a rhyme or two. One hears of such people as Nickolai Rimsky-Korsakov, the Russian composer famous for "Scheherazade," "The Golden Cockerel," and "Flight of the Bumble Bee" (the theme song of the Green Hornet), who could actually hear in color; what would it be like to sense things with all five senses that to our meager knowledge can only be sampled using one or two of the senses? Hear things that we can only see, or taste what can only be felt? As I hashed out the poem, I realized (perhaps subconsciously at the time, but ten years later I now know) that it is not enough to find those answers, nor are the questions even the goal of what I seek; without the Holy Spirit walking with me, it would be utterly pointless - "vanity" and "grasping at the wind." On this Earth I cannot hope to truly taste the night and day, nor see music flow or hear a path's glow, but in that day when there is a new Heaven and a new Earth, who knows what will be possible? Yet even that cannot be the goal of my life - to go to a perfect place with streets of gold when my body gives up its last breath. Who doesn't want to go to Heaven and forgo eternity in the Lake of Fire? But the destination is not what is important; the journey is. Spending my time wandering with Jesus, Savior and Friend, letting Him be my guide, seeing what he wants to reveal to me - that's the real treasure. It's not about Heaven - it's about Him.
John 3:8 acknowledges that "the wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit." I don't know who all is walking with the Spirit - that is in their own hearts to choose; the Spirit will go where the heart is open to receive it. But I do know that I have chosen Jesus as my walking companion, and every day I want to be walking with Him.
God bless!
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