those winter sundays

We read a Robert Hayden poem today in class that ended with these lines:

"What did I know, what did I know

Of love's austere and lonely offices?"

Love's offices can indeed be unlovely, but we undertake them with glad hearts because they are for a beloved. This is the quieter side of parenthood. This is inconvenient services rendered to loved ones. This is the side of love I do not truly know yet.

I hope that God cannot get lonely, because if he could he would certainly have cause to. His offices are both austere and lonely much of the time- or at least to our human minds they must seem so.