My Help Comes from the LORD

A Song of Ascents.

¹I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does my help come?
² My help comes from the LORD,
who made heaven and earth. 
³He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
⁴Behold, he who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
⁵The LORD is your keeper;
the LORD is your shade on your right hand.
⁶ The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.
⁷The LORD will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
⁸The LORD will keep
your going out and your coming in
from this time forth and forevermore.

I got a God-fearing woman
One I can easily afford
I got a God-fearing woman
One I can easily afford
She can do the Georgia crawl
She can walk in the spirit of the Lord.

Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking, Bob Dylan

“Often guys will say, ‘I love Susie.’ This does not necessarily mean they are interested in Susie’s best interest, but rather, ‘I really like the sensations which occur in me whenever Susie is around.’ When a boy says, ‘I love ice cream’ he is not seeking the ice cream’s best interest. He loves the sensation ice cream gives him. In short, he loves himself…

So the time a person spends when he is single should be time spent in preparation for marriage. This is important even if he never gets married. This is because biblical preparation for marriage is nothing more than learning to follow Jesus Christ and to love one’s neighbor. In other words, preparation for Christian marriage is basically the same as preparation for Christian living. Christians are to prepare for marriage by learning self-denial, subduing their pride, and putting their neighbor first. Once they learn to love God and love their neighbor, they are prepared to enter into the covenant of marriage with one of their neighbors. These are issues which should be in the forefront of every parent’s mind as their children approach the age when they may court and marry.“ (Her Hand in Marriage: Biblical Courtship in the Modern World, pp. 83-85).

Dear Heathen:

The Lord Jesus Christ hath promised that the time shall come when all the ends of the earth shall be His kingdom. And God is not a man that He should lie nor the son of man that He should repent. And if this was promised by a Being who cannot lie, why do you not help it to come sooner by reading the Bible, and attending to the words of your teachers, and loving God, and, renouncing your idols, take Christianity into your temples? And soon there will not be a Nation, no, not a space of ground as large as a footstep, that will want a missionary. My sister and myself have, by small self-denials, procured two dollars which are enclosed in this letter to buy tracts and Bibles to teach you.

Archibald Alexander Hodge, and Mary Eliz. Hodge,

Friends of the Heathen.

(June 23, 1833. A letter to the “heathen” from ten-year-old A.A. Hodge and his sister Mary Elizabeth, given to J.R. Eckard, a Princeton Seminary graduate who was to go to Ceylon. Quoted in Princeton Seminary: Faith and learning 1812-1868, v. 1, p. 193).

Like giving a drunk man a mind-puzzle
in order to occupy his cognition
and pacify his beligerance
while you take his shoes off and lay him down.

(This time around I recognize the pattern)

I am inebriated
and You are my puzzle:
I am beginning to realize
that I’m not as cool, smart, funny, or in-control as I thought.

(Once again you played a trick on me)

And yet, while my memory
is somewhat hazy and muddled
I clearly remember you saying
that I would wake up forever-sober in the morning

(You are, among other things, a devoted friend of my soul)