There Is a Land of Pure Delight

At a quaint farmhouse back a long lane.  

I joined four friends for a writers' retreat this week.

Hours of conversation.

Amazing food such as a Belizian brunch.

Fragrant springtime blooms.

Solitude in God's stunning beauty.

I returned from those three days feeling refreshed down to my soul. I have never had an experience quite like it, and I'm still pinching myself to see if I was dreaming.

But now glad to join my favorite people again.

A retreat like this reminds me of how blessed I am. Yes, there are hard moments in my daily life, but I've been given so much joy. I don't even need to get away to experience friendship and love and beauty; I find it every day. 

Days like these with brilliant blue sky and puffy white clouds and smiling little girls are when I mourn for all that Ed lost. I wish he could be enjoying these blessings for a few more decades. 

But is that the right perspective? Ed never mourned for himself; it was always the pain of others that grieved him.

I want to enjoy the blessings God gives me to the fullest, but I don't think I need to pity Ed for missing springtime. I truly want to believe that "the best is yet to come.' And Ed got a head start.

This morning I was flipping through the hymnal and chanced upon this song. If I could stand with Moses, or Ed, I don't think I'd compare the delights of heaven to a May day in Pennsylvania. 

There Is a Land of Pure Delight

by Isaac Watts 

Hymns of the Church #988

There is a land of pure delight, 

Where saints immortal reign;

Eternal day excludes the night, 

And pleasures banish pain.

There everlasting spring abides, 

And never with'ring flow'rs;

Death, like a narrow sea, divides

This heav'nly land from ours.

Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood

Stand dressed in living green;

So to the Jews old Canaan stood,

While Jordan rolled between.

But tim'rous mortals start and shrink

To cross this narrow sea,

And linger, trembling on the brink,

And fear to launch away.

O, could we make our doubts remove,

Those gloomy doubts that rise,

And see the Canaan that we love, 

With unbeclouded eyes!

Could we but climb where Moses stood, 

And view the landscape o'er,

Not Jordan's stream, nor death's cold flood, 

Should fright us from the shore.