ART & POETRY BY PAUL & KATHY BOECHER©

(It always puzzles me how so many of the gigantic birds are able to lift their heavy bodies to the skies.  Even when their mouths are filled with breakfast and the aerodynamics seem impossible, they find the current in the wind and are lifted to heights unknown.  What a great Creator God we have.)

This place that we have loved, this lonely withered space,

Has faltered with the winter snows and cannot rise again,

Without that inner life, that comes from heaven’s place,

Our lives will be diminished and scorned as dead terrain,

Within the ashen colors, inside the lifeless trees,

The damage has been sown, there is no longer gain,

Tempests are replaced with a quiet gentle breeze,

Though life has been drained from it, the fight will not be lost,

The battles will remain, but victory has a cost,

The precious blood of Jesus has paid for every sin,

And wrapped us with the will to live and new life to begin.

Our loss in life will be our gain, when to the end we come,

When we decrease we will increase, God’s plan than will be done.