How Fortunate Infinite Wisdom Prevails!

I love, love, love Ruth Bell Graham's poetry... Mom introduced it to me in fourth grade when she gave me a copy of Ruth's book, "Sitting By My Laughing Fire" and told me to learn to write poetry. {I never did write anything worth saving.}

At the time, I thought her poetry was annoying and hard to understand.

Then I grew up a little and lived a little life and started to savor some of her Ruth's words.

And now, there are few things I like more than a Ruth Bell Graham poem. The realness just oozes from it... and her words say what my heart never managed to put into words.

I'll share one of my all-time favorites tonight.

Had I been Joseph's mother

I'd have prayed

protection from his brothers:

"God keep him safe;

he is so young,

so different from

the others."

Mercifully she never knew

there would be slavery

and prison, too.

Had I been Moses' mother

I'd have wept

to keep my little son;

praying she might forget

the babe drawn from the water

of the Nile,

had I not kept

him for her

nursing him the while?

Was he not mine

and she

but Pharaoh's daughter?

Had I been Daniel's mother

I should have pled

"Give victory!

This Babylonian horde-

godless and cruel -

don't let them take him captive

-- better dead,

Almighty Lord!"

Had I been Mary -

Oh, had I been she,

I would have cried

as never a mother cried,

"...Anything, O God,

anything...

but crucified!"

With such prayers

importunate

my finite wisdom

would assail

Infinite Wisdom;

God, how fortunate

Infinite Wisdom

should prevail!

-- RBG