Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Thanksgiving



Covenant God of mercy, thank you!

Alleluia!

Selah.

Saturday, November 19, 2011

A judgment of man via heart and soul

Appearance vs. reality

"An' there's Price--Monty Price. Monty stands fer Montana, where he hails from. Take a good look at him, Miss Majesty. He's been hurt, I reckon. Thet accounts fer him bein' without hoss or rope; an' thet limp. Wal, he's been ripped a little. It's sure rare an seldom thet a cowboy gets foul of one of them thousands of sharp horns; but it does happen."

Madeline saw a very short, wizened little man, ludicrously bow-legged, with a face the color and hardness of a burned-out cinder. He was hobbling by toward the wagon, and one of his short, crooked legs dragged.

"Not much to look at, is he?" went on Stillwell. "Wal; I know it's natural thet we're all best pleased by good looks in any one, even a man. It hedn't ought to be thet way. Monty Price looks like hell. But appearances are sure deceivin'. Monty saw years of ridin' along the Missouri bottoms, the big prairies, where there's high grass an' sometimes fires.

In Montana they have blizzards that freeze cattle standin' in their tracks. An' hosses freeze to death. They tell me thet a drivin' sleet in the face with the mercury forty below is somethin' to ride against. You can't get Monty to say much about cold. All you hev to do is to watch him, how he hunts the sun. It never gets too hot fer Monty. Wal, I reckon he was a little more prepossessin' once. The story thet come to us about Monty is this: He got caught out in a prairie fire an' could hev saved himself easy, but there was a lone ranch right in the line of fire, an' Monty knowed the rancher was away, an' his wife an' baby was home. He knowed, too, the way the wind was, thet the ranch-house would burn. It was a long chance he was takin'. But he went over, put the woman up behind him, wrapped the baby an' his hoss's haid in a wet blanket, an' rode away. Thet was sure some ride, I've heerd. But the fire ketched Monty at the last. The woman fell an' was lost, an' then his hoss. An' Monty ran an' walked an' crawled through the fire with thet baby, an' he saved it. Monty was never much good as a cowboy after thet. He couldn't hold no jobs. Wal, he'll have one with me as long as I have a steer left."

Selah.

Zane, Grey, The Definitive Zane Grey Collection: 26 Westerns in One Volume
(Unexpurgated Edition) (Halcyon Classics) (Kindle Locations 30840-30848). Halcyon Press Ltd.. Kindle Edition.

Tuesday, November 01, 2011

She shall rise a woman at last



Of some of the places into which Falconer led me that night I will attempt no description -- places flashing with lights and mirrors, crowded with dancers, billowing with music, close and hot, and full of the saddest of all sights, the superficial faces of cheapened women.

'There is a passion,' I said, as we came out of one of these dreadful places, 'that lingers about the heart like the odor of violets, like a glimmering twilight on the borders of moonrise; and there is a passion that wraps itself in the vapors of patchouli and coffins, and streams from the eyes like gaslight from a tavern. And yet the line is ill to draw between them. It is very dreadful. These are women.'

'They are in God's hands,' answered Falconer. 'He hasn't done with them yet. Shall it take less time to make a woman than to make a world? Is not the woman the greater? She may have her ages of chaos, her centuries of crawling slime, yet rise a woman at last.'

Selah.

-- George MacDonald, "My Own Acquaintance," Robert Falconer.