"Blessed of My Father," that is our eternal name!

 “Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world…”

Matthew 25:34

“Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

Luke 12:32

Whither, ‘midst falling dew,

While glows the heavens with the last steps of day,

Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue

Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler’s eye

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,

As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,

Thy figure floats along.

Seek’st thou the plashy brink

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,

Or where the rocking billows rise and sink

On the chafed ocean side?

There is a Power whose care

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast, --

The desert and illimitable air, --

Lone  wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fann’d

At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere;

 Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,

Though the dark of night is near.

And soon that toil shall end,

Soon shalt thou find a summer home and rest,

And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend

Soon o’er thy sheltered nest.

Thou’rt gone, the abyss of heaven

Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart

Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou has given,

And shall not soon depart.

He, who, from zone to zone,

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,

In the long way that I must tread alone,

Will lead my steps aright.

“To a Waterfowl”

 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

         The soul that shuts itself and holds its peace while the world is near grows securer in silence of contemplation, and lets out its gentle thoughts and whispering joys, its hopes or sad fears, unto the listening ear and before the kindly eye of God!  But in souls which have caught something of the beauty of the divine life, prayer in many of its moods becomes more than this. There are times of yearning and longing, far beyond the help of the most hopeful.  There is a prayer which is the voice of the soul pleading its birthright, crying out for its immortality; it is heavenly homesickness.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

1813-1887

"Blessed of My Father," that is our eternal name!  How those words come to us in the tingling stillness of the night, when panic fears oppress our loneliness, and so strangely vex our souls!  How they rise soft and clear above the tolling of the world, in hours of weariness and obstinate temptation!  How they sing songs to the fear of death, and lull it when it wakens and cries, "Blessed of My Father!"

F.W. FABER

1815-1863