New Month/No Theme

Hello readers! It’s May now, and I’m ready for Spring. It’s the season of new life — trees are budding, flowers are blooming, and it’s a great time to get outdoors and enjoy creation. This poem appeared in our church bulletin recently, and it captures the miraculous, continuing renewal of our world.

God’s Grandeur by Gerald Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Stay tuned this month for more book reviews, quotes and spiritual insights from our authors. God loves you and so do we!