It's Never Too Late for Love

Valentine's Day? What's that to me?  I'm way past sixty-five.

It's quite enough to strut my stuff and say that I'm alive.

But this day brings back memories of happy days of yore 

When youth and energy, dreams and hopes emerged . . .and yet there's more 

There's that enchanted feeling that emerges from above 

Our lifetime starts a second time - this time the theme is love.

But love, you say, is youthful,  naive and juvenile.

I disagree -  you missed the mark by sure a country mile.

We grow older but not colder, our hearts beat fast as ever, 

And joy and laughter triumph amid all the threats to sever.

Pains and sorrows come our way - we bear them patiently 

But love? It never dims - it rather stirs relentlessly.

So Valentine has come again - perhaps to fan the flames 

Reminding us of youthful aspirations, inspiration, aims, 

Considering that while much is taken, much still abides 

Calling us to make the most of what we are - besides 

Thanking God we still can love - it is our unique pleasure, 

For loving is our deathless virtue, our prevailing treasure.

Larry Gruman.         Valentine's Day.  2014

Why It All Began

The poet is more of a cosmologist in the 90th Psalm. He envisions a time before the earth  existed, before mountains came forth, and concludes that God made something from nothing. There is  no big bang here, but a creation, or perhaps a transition, is called for. The immensity of time is called for "Even from everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God."

This is rare thinking in a time when the existing world was considered to be permanent and eternal. The poet also wrestles with time, unlimited time that God has at His disposal.  God chooses; He creates! That's his conclusion to the question of why we exist. 

Scientists at the Hadron Collider are trying to fathom how something arose out of nothing. But they cannot begin to answer the question of why that happened. Leave that to the poet, the psalmist. It is imagination stretched to the utmost.

A Table for Sheep?

The marvelously poetic twenty-third Psalm, probably the most memorized passage of the Old Testament, is marred.  The problem comes in the line "Thou preparest  a table in the presence of mine enemies."  Before and after this phrase the image of God as shepherd is perfectly maintained.

There have been many attempts to explain this fractured image, none of them able to justify a table set in the presence of enemies.  The flaw in the Psalm as we have it is in the translation, likely by the King James Bible team . . . .or in the early printing of their version.

In order to make sense and maintain consistence in the poem, it is necessary to change one word: table.  The writer is describing the care given by the shepherd in preparing pasture for his sheep, ridding that land of the sheep's enemies, the jackals, snakes and foxes that prey on sheepfold. Perhaps the word table suggests flat table-land or an expanse of pastureland.

The telling phrase in the Psalm should read: "Thou preparest a field ridding it of my enemies."

That revision clearly retains the imagery of the Psalm, adding an emphasis on God's outreaching  care for his people.