Morning by Morning

"The Lord GOD has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him who is weary. Morning by morning he awakens; he awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught. The Lord GOD has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious; I turned not backward." Isaiah 50:4-5

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Where Be All the Splinters of Bone?




Where be all the splinters of that bone, which a shot hath shivered and scattered in the air?  Where be all the atoms of that flesh, which a corrosive hath eat away, or a consumption hat breathed, and exhaled away from our arms, and other limbs?  In what wrinkle, in what furrow, in what bowel of earth, lie all the grains of the ashes of a body burnt a thousand years since?  In what corner, in what ventricle of the sea, lies all the jelly of a body drowned in the general flood?  

What coherence, what sympathy, what dependence maintains any relation, any correspondence, between that arm that was lost in Europe, and that leg that was lost in Afrique or Aisa, scores of years between?  … all dies, and all dries, and moulders into dust, and that dust is blown into the river, and that puddled water tumbled into the sea, and that ebbs and flows in infinite revolutions, and still, still God knows in what cabinet every seed-pearl lives, in what part of the world every grain of a man’s dust lies; and … he whispers, he hisses, he beckons for the bodies of his saints, and in the twinkling of an eye, that body that was scattered over all the elements is sat down at the right hand of God, in glorious resurrection.   

  – John Donne, The Resurrection of the Body, Sermon, 19 November, 1627



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