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| Gyo Fujikawa, The Little Land |
The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.
- Robert Louis Stevenson from A Child's Garden of Verses
I love the simplicity of this short poem. Stevenson wrote so many wonderful poems to the sensibility of a child. My friend, Nancy Dauterman, first introduced me to Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses when I helped teach in her Kindergarten classroom. Those poems and her sweet Kindergarten class were instrumental in reuniting me with my own child heart. I highly recommend this book to all children and their parents. The illustration here is from my daughter's own copy illustrated by Gyo Fujikawa. It's wonderful.
I can't help but find a parallel between Stevenson's words and the way God calls us his children, while also calling us heirs to his own kingdom. Is that amazing? God himself has written to us as a father writes to his own children, hoping we'll read as the very children he knew, trusting and seeking - all the while pouring out his unexplainable blessing around us - as we pass by unaware.
Wake up little children! Let's be kings again!
This is my version.
Afternoon
I strolled the afternoon
like a child through a mansion.
I peered down burnished avenues
like corridors flocked and brassen.
I reveled in every jewel I found
like an orphan playing a prince,
as if every silvery sight and sound
was sealed in my inheritance.
I skipped through tree-lined vaults
laden with tender gold medallions,
knowing the treasures here where I walk
are stored forever in Heaven by the thousands.
::
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
Romans 1:20
::
Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
Romans 8:17-21I can't help but find a parallel between Stevenson's words and the way God calls us his children, while also calling us heirs to his own kingdom. Is that amazing? God himself has written to us as a father writes to his own children, hoping we'll read as the very children he knew, trusting and seeking - all the while pouring out his unexplainable blessing around us - as we pass by unaware.
Wake up little children! Let's be kings again!
This is my version.
Afternoon
I strolled the afternoon
like a child through a mansion.
I peered down burnished avenues
like corridors flocked and brassen.
I reveled in every jewel I found
like an orphan playing a prince,
as if every silvery sight and sound
was sealed in my inheritance.
I skipped through tree-lined vaults
laden with tender gold medallions,
knowing the treasures here where I walk
are stored forever in Heaven by the thousands.
::
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
Romans 1:20
::
Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
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