Wise Men

I don't know much about George Matheson, but I know I like him.  I wrote a post about his famous Song "O Love that Will Not Let Me Go" here.  And then tonight as I was reading I found this from him,


"My dear God I have never thanked you for my thorns. I have thanked you a thousand times for my roses, but not once for my thorns. I have always looked forward to the place where I will be rewarded for my cross, but I have never thought of my cross as a present glory itself.  Teach me, Oh Lord, to glory in my cross. Teach me the value of my thorns. Show me how I have climbed to you through the path of pain. Show me it is though my tears I have seen my rainbows." 


Really challenging words. Really convicting words.  Matheson must have been a very wise man.  


Also challenged by these words today from Dietrech Bonhoeffer,  "No one has heard about the realm of the resurrected and not been homesick from that hour."  He said these words on the day he was hung on, April 9, 1945.  Very powerful words I would say. And to come from the lips of a man who is breathing his final breaths of life. 

I wasn't very familiar with Bonhoeffer until being under the pastorate of Tim Keller, but the more I read of him and learn of him, the more I see what an incredibly Godly man he 
was.  I want to tackle his biography one of these days. 


Like these men, I really want to be a woman of the Lord.  I want to be less consumed with things of the world and more consumed with my eternal hope. I really need Jesus and am thankful that he has promised to complete the good work that He began in me.