From the Pen of My Wife
This Christmas I would like to give you a gift from my beloved wife. Reading through her journals has brought back treasured memories of 57 years of marriage. This Christmas I would like to give you a gift from one of her journals — two entries that were meaningful to me. The first was written by Marva and the second by Myra Brooks Welch. (It has no copy right so I feel free to use it.)
Teach Me Lord
By Marva Harder
Teach me, my Lord, to be sweet and gentle in all the events of life.
In disappointments
In the thoughtlessness of others,
In the insincerity of those I trusted,
In the unfaithfulness of those on whom I relied.
Let me put myself aside
To think of the happiness of others,
To hide my little pains and heartaches,
So that I may be the only one to suffer from them.
Teach me to profit by the suffering that comes across my path.
Let me so use it that it may mellow me not harden nor embitter me.
That it may make me patient, not irritable.
That it may make me broad in my forgiveness, not narrow, haughty and overbearing.
May no one be less good for having come within my influence.
No one less pure, less kind, less noble for having been a fellow-traveler in my journey toward eternal life.
The Touch of the Master’s Hand
By Myra BrooksWelch
“T’was battered and scarred, and the auctioneer thought it scarcely worth his while
To waste much time on the old violin but held it up with a smile.
“What am I bid,” good folks,” he cried, “who’ll start bidding for me?
A dollar, a dollar – now two, only two – two dollars, and who’ll make it three?
“Three dollars, once, three dollars twice, going for three” – but no!
From the room far back a gray-haired man came forward and picked up the bow.
Then wiping the dust from the old violin, and tightening up all the strings,
He played a melody, pure and sweet, as sweet as an angel sings.
The music ceased, and the auctioneer, with a voice that was quiet and low,
Said, “What am I bid for the old violin?” And he held it up with the bow.
“A thousand dollars – and who’ll make it two? Two thousand – and who’ll make it three?
Three thousand once, and three thousand twice – and going and gone,” said he.
The people cheered but some of them cried – “We do not understand.
What changed its worth?
The man replied: “The touch of the master’s hand.”
And many a man with life out of tune, and battered and torn with sin,
Is auctioned cheap to a thoughtless crowd, much like the old violin.
But the Master comes, and the foolish crowd never can understand
The worth of a soul, and the change that’s wrought
By the touch of the Master’s hand.
This Christmas may we all be touched by the One who came as a baby, died on the cross as a criminal, and rose from the dead as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
Duane Harder
