Darkness Be Gone

I thank the blog Gladsome Lights at http://gretchenjoanna.blogspot.com/ for the following George MacDonald poem. It's from A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul.

With every morn my life afresh must break

The crust of self, gathered about me fresh;

That thy wind-spirit may rush in and shake

The darkness out of me, and rend the mesh

The spider-devils spin out of the flesh—

Eager to net the soul before it wake,

That it may slumberous lie, and listen to the snake.

I've finally shaken off the melancholy of the last few weeks and stopped listening to the snake.

In Remembrance of Gabe's Daddy

See the little boy in red? He was in my class this summer in Vacation Bible School. He was visiting a cousin who used to go to our church, so they both came to VBS. I talked with him on the last day about where he was from, where he went to church, etc. A very personable young man, he told me he lived in Virginia and that his daddy was in Afghanistan. I enjoyed our talk very much.

Two days ago, I learned that his daddy was one of the Navy Seals on the helicopter that was shot down in Afghanistan; the one in which 31 young men, in the prime of life, died.

My heart aches for Gabe and the loss of his daddy. His life will be forever changed. Please pray for him, his family, and the others who lost a son, husband, brother, or friend.