A Prayer in Spring
-Robert Frost
Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.
Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.
And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.
For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfil.
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.
Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.
And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.
For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfil.
I like the first stanza the best… Asking God to simply allow us time to be in this moment, this time, rather than looking ahead to what could be a major problem. I feel like we do that a lot, we get to a good place and the minute everything is okay, we start worrying about what could go wrong around the next bend in the road. We spend all this time asking God for a "safe, good place" but whenever we find ourselves in one, we don't recognize it, because we're already too busy worrying about the next thing that we have no power over.
I don’t think we need to be naive, or pretend like problems will not exist in the future. But... I think there is a difference in living in the knowledge that things could go badly, and worrying about them going badly. Worry doesn't ever fix the situation, if anything, it causes it to become worse. Or at least, that's what I've seen... I could be wrong. But that’s just what I think.
But while we are in a state of, "The future could go wrong but may not", it's nice to just... enjoy the moment now. Because it is only our moment for a little while, and then it's the past. The future also doesn't get here, or look any different when it finally does get here, if we spend all our time worrying. So, I think it is wise to ask God to allow us to enjoy the present, because I for one don't want to look back on my past and realize that all I did with it was worry about the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment