“Still on the lips of all we question,
The finger of God’s silence lies;
Will the lost hands in ours be folded?
Will the shut eyelids ever rise?
O friend, no proof beyond this yearning,
This outreach of our hearts, we need;
God will not mock the hope he giveth,
No love he prompts shall vainly plead.
Then let us stretch our hands in darkness,
And call our loved ones o’er and o’er;
Some day their arms will close about us,
And the old voices speak once more.”
“Thank God for friends your life has known,
For every dear, departed day;
The blessed past is safe alone–
God gives, but does not take away;
He only safely keeps above
For us the treasures that we love.”
Next to the little twenty third Psalm, the fourteenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel is, no doubt, the best known and best loved portion of the Bible. It is a chapter of comfort. The sick love it, for there is a music in it which soothes pain and suffering. The dying love it, for it has its revealing of the life into which they are passing. The bereft love it, for it opens windows into heaven, and gives them glimpses of the blessed life of those who have gone to be at home in the Father’s house.
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