He has no hope who never had a fear

Saved from something.

See where it smokes along the sounding plain,
Blown all aslant, a driving, dashing rain,
Peal upon peal redoubling all around,
Shakes it again and faster to the ground;
Now flashing wide, now glancing as in play,
Swift beyond thought the lightnings dart away.
Ere yet it came the traveller urged his steed,
And hurried, but with unsuccessful speed;
Now drench’d throughout, and hopeless of his case,
He drops the rein, and leaves him to his pace.
Suppose, unlook’d-for in a scene so rude,
Long hid by interposing hill or wood,
Some mansion, neat and elegantly dress’d,
By some kind hospitable heart possess’d,
Offer him warmth, security, and rest;
Think with what pleasure, safe, and at his ease,
He hears the tempest howling in the trees;
What glowing thanks his lips and heart employ,
While danger past is turn’d to present joy.
So fares it with the sinner, when he feels
A growing dread of vengeance at his heels:
His conscience like a glassy lake before,
Lash’d into foaming waves, begins to roar;
The law, grown clamorous, though silent long,
Arraigns him, charges him with every wrong—
Asserts the right of his offended Lord,
And death, or restitution, is the word:
The last impossible, he fears the first,
And, having well deserved, expects the worst.
Then welcome refuge and a peaceful home;
O for a shelter from the wrath to come!
Crush me, ye rocks; ye falling mountains, hide,
Or bury me in ocean’s angry tide!—
The scrutiny of those all-seeing eyes
I dare not—And you need not, God replies;
The remedy you want I freely give;
The Book shall teach you—read, believe, and live!
‘Tis done—the raging storm is heard no more,
Mercy receives him on her peaceful shore:
And Justice, guardian of the dread command,
Drops the red vengeance from his willing hand.
A soul redeem’d demands a life of praise;
Hence the complexion of his future days,
Hence a demeanour holy and unspeck’d,
And the world’s hatred, as its sure effect.

Some lead a life unblameable and just,
Their own dear virtue their unshaken trust:
They never sin—or if (as all offend)
Some trivial slips their daily walk attend,
The poor are near at hand, the charge is small,
A slight gratuity atones for all.
For though the Pope has lost his interest here,
And pardons are not sold as once they were,
No Papist more desirous to compound,
Than some grave sinners upon English ground.
That plea refuted, other quirks they seek—
Mercy is infinite, and man is weak;
The future shall obliterate the past,
And heaven, no doubt, shall be their home at last.

Come, then—a still, small whisper in your ear—
He has no hope who never had a fear;
And he that never doubted of his state,
He may perhaps—perhaps he may—too late.

-good stuff from William Cowper's, Truth

Spiderman

Remind me in about 10 years when we can pull these pictures out for full effect. The boy loves this costume.

Family Picture at Loose

This picture represents a small miracle in that we were able to get this shot with a remote shutter release and everyone looking at the camera and smiling. The only head we had to clone was the man's with the clicker who was overly concentrating on said clicker.

Preference?

1.

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3.

4.

5.

Football

Smithville High School has a nice, turf football field. On Sunday we practiced a few plays much to the boys excitement.

KC Airshow

Both boys were very excited to go to the Air Show. For Eli it was a nervous excitement. We parked at Briarcliff and took a nice Arrow Bus to the downtown airport. Eli was nervously talking nonstop. As providence would dictate, we arrived at the airport just as the US Navy F18 was taking off. What amazing power and noise! Eli was terrified. He was so excited but in that split second he was ready to be as far away from that place as he could get. My Mom graciously bought him some head phones and he wore those along with the ear plugs we brought with us for the entire 3 hours we were there. They seemed to help. Isaac was upset but mainly, I think, to see how Eli was so distraught. After the F18 things quieted down and everyone had a good time.

Grace makes the slave a freeman

I'll recognize Calvin's birthday by way of William Cowper. Excerpted from The Task, Book V, Lines 589 - 714

Chains are the portion of revolted man,
Stripes, and a dungeon; and his body serves
The triple purpose. In that sickly, foul,
Opprobrious residence he finds them all.
Propense his heart to idols, he is held
In silly dotage on created things,
Careless of their Creator. And that low
And sordid gravitation of his powers
To a vile clod so draws him, with such force
Resistless from the centre he should seek,
That he at last forgets it. All his hopes
Tend downward; his ambition is to sink,
To reach a depth profounder still, and still
Profounder, in the fathomless abyss
Of folly, plunging in pursuit of death.
But, ere he gain the comfortless repose
He seeks, and aquiescence of his soul,
In heaven-renouncing exile, he endures—
What does he not, from lusts opposed in vain,
And self-reproaching conscience? He foresees
The fatal issue to his health, fame, peace,
Fortune, and dignity; the loss of all
That can ennoble man, and make frail life,
Short as it is, supportable. Still worse,
Far worse than all the plagues, with which his sins
Infect his happiest moments, he forebodes
Ages of hopeless misery. Future death,
And death still future. Not a hasty stroke,
Like that which sends him to the dusty grave:
But unrepealable enduring death.
Scripture is still a trumpet to his fears:
What none can prove a forgery may be true;
What none but bad men wish exploded must.
That scruple checks him. Riot is not loud
Nor drunk enough to drown it. In the midst
Of laughter his compunctions are sincere;
And he abhors the jest by which he shines.
Remorse begets reform. His master-lust
Falls first before his resolute rebuke,
And seems dethroned and vanquish’d. Peace ensues,
But spurious and short-lived; the puny child
Of self-congratulating pride, begot
On fancied innocence. Again he falls,
And fights again; but finds his best essay
A presage ominous, portending still
Its own dishonour by a worse relapse.
Till Nature, unavailing Nature, foil’d
So oft, and wearied in the vain attempt,
Scoffs at her own performance. Reason now
Takes part with appetite, and pleads the cause
Perversely, which of late she so condemn’d;
With shallow shifts and old devices, worn
And tatter’d in the service of debauch,
Covering his shame from his offended sight.

“Hath God indeed given appetites to man,
And stored the earth so plenteously with means
To gratify the hunger of his wish;
And doth he reprobate, and will he damn
The use of his own bounty? making first
So frail a kind, and then enacting laws
So strict, that less than perfect must despair?
Falsehood! which whoso but suspects of truth
Dishonours God, and makes a slave of man.
Do they themselves, who undertake for hire
The teacher’s office, and dispense at large
Their weekly dole of edifying strains,
Attend to their own music? have they faith
In what, with such solemnity of tone
And gesture, they propound to our belief?
Nay—conduct hath the loudest tongue. The voice
Is but an instrument, on which the priest
May play what tune he pleases. In the deed,
The unequivocal, authentic deed,
We find sound argument, we read the heart.”

Such reasonings (if that name must needs belong
To excuses in which reason has no part)
Serve to compose a spirit well inclined
To live on terms of amity with vice,
And sin without disturbance. Often urged
(As often as libidinous discourse
Exhausted, he resorts to solemn themes
Of theological and grave import),
They gain at last his unreserved assent;
Till harden’d his heart’s temper in the forge
Of lust, and on the anvil of despair,
He slights the strokes of conscience. Nothing moves
Or nothing much, his constancy in ill;
Vain tampering has but foster’d his disease;
‘Tis desperate, and he sleeps the sleep of death.
Haste now, philosopher, and set him free.
Charm the deaf serpent wisely. Make him hear
Of rectitude and fitness, moral truth
How lovely, and the moral sense how sure,
Consulted and obey’d, to guide his steps
Directly to the first and only fair.
Spare not in such a cause. Spend all the powers
Of rant and rhapsody in virtue’s praise:
Be most sublimely good, verbosely grand,
And with poetic trappings grace thy prose,
Till it outmantle all the pride of verse.—
Ah, tinkling cymbal, and high-sounding brass,
Smitten in vain! such music cannot charm
The eclipse that intercepts truth’s heavenly beam,
And chills and darkens a wide wandering soul.
The STILL SMALL VOICE is wanted. He must speak,
Whose word leaps forth at once to its effect;
Who calls for things that are not, and they come.

Grace makes the slave a freeman. ‘Tis a change
That turns to ridicule the turgid speech
And stately tone of moralists, who boast,
As if, like him of fabulous renown,
They had indeed ability to smooth
The shag of savage nature, and were each
An Orpheus, and omnipotent in song.
But transformation of apostate man
From fool to wise, from earthly to divine,
Is work for Him that made him. He alone,
And He by means in philosophic eyes
Trivial and worthy of disdain, achieves
The wonder; humanizing what is brute
In the lost kind, extracting from the lips
Of asps their venom, overpowering strength
By weakness, and hostility by love.

More SIC09 Pictures

Looking through these, the best pictures we took of the little man were of him running away from us.

2500 Miles, 2500 Pictures

Here's just one picture. We had a great trip to Sea Isle City, New Jersey. Both boys loved the beach. What a blessing.

The Ks at the K

It was our first ballgame at the K since Isaac was 2 weeks old (we saw a game in St. Louis last year). The Cards romped the Royals, btw.

The Lord's "august design" in Natural Revelation

Below is an excerpt from William Cowper's poem, Hope. Cowper has been called the "apostle of nature" for reasons such as the below.

I can print the entire poem as a little booklet upon request. I think reading it is worth the effort required. As an example of the effort required, I had to do some research to find out who Cowper referred to as Leuconomus ("beneath well-sounding Greek I slur a name a poet must not speak"). Can anyone decipher the saint who Cowper is referring to???


The just Creator condescends to write,
In beams of inextinguishable light,
His names of wisdom, goodness, power, and love,
On all that blooms below, or shines above;
To catch the wandering notice of mankind,
And teach the world, if not perversely blind,
His gracious attributes, and prove the share
His offspring hold in his paternal care.
If, led from earthly things to things divine,
His creature thwart not his august design,
Then praise is heard instead of reasoning pride,
And captious cavil and complaint subside.
Nature, employ’d in her allotted place,
Is handmaid to the purposes of grace;
By good vouchsafed makes known superior good,
And bliss not seen by blessings understood:
That bliss, reveal’d in Scripture, with a glow
Bright as the covenant-insuring bow,
Fires all his feelings with a noble scorn
Of sensual evil, and thus Hope is born.

Hope sets the stamp of vanity on all
That men have deem’d substantial since the fall,
Yet has the wondrous virtue to educe
From emptiness itself a real use;
And while she takes, as at a father’s hand,
What health and sober appetite demand,
From fading good derives, with chemic art,
That lasting happiness, a thankful heart.
Hope, with uplifted foot, set free from earth,
Pants for the place of her ethereal birth,
On steady wings sails through the immense abyss,
Plucks amaranthine joys from bowers of bliss,
And crowns the soul, while yet a mourner here,
With wreaths like those triumphant spirits wear.
Hope, as an anchor, firm and sure, holds fast
The Christian vessel, and defies the blast.
Hope! nothing else can nourish and secure
His new-born virtues, and preserve him pure.
Hope! let the wretch, once conscious of the joy,
Whom now despairing agonies destroy,
Speak, for he can, and none so well as he,
What treasures centre, what delights, in thee.
Had he the gems, the spices, and the land,
That boasts the treasure, all at his command;
The fragrant grove, the inestimable mine,
Were light, when weigh’d against one smile of thine.

St. Louis Trip

Here's a link to a slideshow of pictures from our St. Louis trip, most of which are of the spectacular Missouri Botanical Garden. If you are ever in St. Louis, do yourself a favor and stop by. It turns 150 years old this year making it the oldest such garden in the country and is home to a 14 acre Japanese garden which is the largest Japanese strolling garden in the Western Hemisphere. We couldn't have been there at a better time; it was on fire with spring color. As the saying goes, the pictures don't do it justice. As I think back, I am kicking myself for the pictures we didn't take. I think there is a bit of sensory overload that begins to kick in. Not only do they have the beautiful Japanese Maples, flowering trees and shrubs and flowers, they also have the biggest Pin Oaks I have ever seen. There was a Pumpkin Ash so big you could fit your hand in the fissures of the bark. I am already looking forward to our return, maybe in the fall!

We also visited the Arch and the zoo (which is only 3 miles from the garden). At the zoo it turned cooler and sprinkled on us most of the time so we didn't get as many pictures. We had a good time and are thankful to Po for the trip!

Soccer

Last night was the first night of soccer practice. The boy was pretty excited. There were probably 60 kids in his group (they broke them down to about 6 kids per coach for 10 "teams"). We have been playing in the back yard where we try to take the ball away from him (he also adds some of his own strange rules). Leading up to the practice he kept saying that he wasn't going to let any of the kids take his ball away. When we first got there I think he was a bit overwhelmed. We got his shirt and walked down to the fields and we said go get 'em. He said, "I am not playing with all of those kids." It didn't take him long to get out there though. He threw his ball out into the field, where everybody was kicking around with the coaches and parents, and chased after it. He likes to drop back about 30 yards and then and kick the ball (he's pretty tired by the time he actually gets to the ball). He's in the same group as cousin Tyler. He listened well and stayed pretty focused. We had to strong arm Isaac to keep him off the field.

Narnia at Union Station

http://narnia.unionstation.org/

Good Morning

From Crops

Long Time No See

For Christmas, my Dad got us a new TV and a Wii. One of our favorite family games is Wii Sports Bowling. For Lisa's Birthday I took a couple of days off from work and we went "real bowling" as Eli says. Pretty exciting. You'll notice Eli crossing the line in one of the pics. He about jumped out of his skin when he heard the buzz.

We finished that day off at the Lake. Lord help us not to take these moments for granted.

We also have a Star Wars Legos game for the Wii and Eli's new favorite thing is Star Wars. He got a Star Wars Legos kit for Valentine's Day.

The little man is going to be the reactor of the family. His face absolutely lit up when he saw his puppy dog. The puppy dog still has priviledge in his crib.