"Thy book of toil is read" - Vanity, music & eternity

„No star is o'er the lake,

Its pale watch keeping,

The moon is half awake,

Through gray mist creeping,

The last red leaves fall round

The porch of roses,

The clock hath ceased to sound,

The long day closes.

 

Sit by the silent hearth

In calm endeavour,

To count the sounds of mirth,

Now dumb for ever.

Heed not how hope believes

And fate disposes:

Shadow is round the eaves,

The long day closes;

 

The lighted windows dim

Are fading slowly.

The fire that was so trim

Now quivers lowly.

Go to the dreamless bed

Where grief reposes,

Thy book of toil is read,

The long day closes.“

 

 

 

(If you like the poem a little, you may like this a lot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqoE_pW7a8M)

 It has been the King’s singers in the concert yesterday – that fabulous concert. It is hard to imagine there could be singers even more talented, and while they led us through french woods and love stories and Estnian psalms and stopped by the window of Phyllis who sat and knotted all the while, this one special song stole itself into that very corner of my heart where thoughts of severity and beauty and ache meet.

How can a song that is so utterly sad that it can very well make you cry when you dwell on the lyrics for a while be so beautiful at the same time?

It would seem that the romantics add so much depth and texture to our days that we often miss. (At least this is why I think we all love them, and rightly so.)

And yet, they may betray us. They may lead us to mistake vanity for meaning.

We have never been meant to die. We have been created to run downhill on grassy slopes and to feel the sun on our skin and the wind in our hair, to investigate, to care, to make grace tangible, to walk through the garden with our creator. Much of that paradise has been lost. But we can be restored. We can be cleansed from our sin that parts us from God.

Jesus has died for us that we could live, and have it to the full.

And yes, many of us suffer so much. I am not sure, whether this book of toil exists. But when we will be with the Lord Jesus, he will dry our tears and he will be our light for that long day, that begins and will go on forever and ever.

 „Look! God’s dwelling-place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death” or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’

I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendour into it.“