Today, whatever may annoy,
The word for me is Joy, just simple Joy:
The joy of life;
The joy of children and of wife;
The joy of bright blue skies;
The joy of rain; the glad surprise
Of twinkling stars that shine at night;
The joy of winged things upon their flight;
The joy of noonday, and the tried
True joyousness of eventide;
The joy of labour, and of mirth;
The joy of air, and sea, and earth–
The countless joys that ever flow from Him
Whose vast beneficence doth dim
The lustrous light of day,
And lavish gifts divine upon our way.
Whate’er be there of Sorrow
I’ll put off till Tomorrow,
And when Tomorrow comes, why ten
’Twill be today and Joy again.
In one of his epistles St. Paul gives an interesting suggestion for a beautiful life. He says, “let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” The point to be noted is that the dwelling of the word of Christ in the heart produces a musical outflow, a life of song – “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.”
The words suggest, in general, good and beautiful lives. Every such life is a song. In another of his epistles St. Paul says, “We are God’s workmanship,” and commentators tell us that the word workmanship means poem. “We are God’s poem.”
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