CLARA LANGFORD CALLS BACK

Bereavement and loneliness go hand in hand especially when you have lost a beloved partner with whom you have enjoyed so much happiness, fellowship and love. Clara Langford, a Somerset schoolmistress, experienced such a loss and comforted many through her inspired poems.  When her beloved husband met with an accident which caused much suffering and eventually resulted in his death, she tells how God helped her meet the dark hours of loneliness which followed:

“Oh, has He planned it right when darkness falls,

And all one’s world which once looked fair and bright

Had faded out of sight and sorrow reigns?

He’s planned it right.”

“Thus I wrote in my darkest hours,” Clara writes, when deepest sorrow and loss had touched my life, changing everything. Those of us who have suffered in this way, know how the sorrow returns like a flood to be fought by faith and prayer. It was so with me one May Sunday morning in the early days of my grief. I woke with a sense of depression. Rising early I dressed, made a cup of tea on my stove in my tiny bungalow—I could not eat—and gathering up my Testament, notebook and pencil, put on coat and hat, locked my door and set out to walk, in the loneliness of my spirit.

“It was a perfect morning and the countryside was lovely. I skirted the village for the woodland road. As I stood on the brow of the first meadow, with a sob in my throat, I said aloud, ‘Father Thou knowest, I am so distressed, so lonely, almost heart-broken, and the way seems very difficult—speak to me this morning before I return.’

“Then I wended my way down into the valley. A gate led into a peaceful and picturesque old lane shaded by trees. A stream sang its way through the meadow close by. Oh, the peace and loveliness of that morning as I slowly walked along that lane—walked with a sad, lonely heart and all the time, though I knew it not, my prayer was being answered.

“A little further on the lane widened into a woodland road and a gap in the hedge revealed a small clearing among the trees and a fallen ivy-covered tree trunk lay invitingly a few yards away, so I went in and sat on it.

“Looking around I saw young fern fronds springing up in clusters and at a short distance a large furze bush in all bright yellow blossom. I listened to the birds’ songs. I longed with an unspeakable longing for the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that was still, until I broke into uncontrollable sobbing until I was spent.

“Presently, I opened my Testament, asking for a message. My eyes lighted on St. Paul’s words to the Philippians, 1:12, ‘But I would ye should understand, brethren, that the things which have happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the Gospel.’ Oh, here was strength indeed!—Might not I too, make a pearl out of my grain of sand? I prayed that it might be so and that He would strengthen my heart—give me a new message.

“I lifted my eyes to the tops of the tall trees, beautiful in their new spring dress, then at the glorious blue of the sky above—I thought of life’s journey, now so lonely without the dear one who had made life rich and beautiful and in the intensity of my spirit I said, ‘Oh, Father, do you know when hearts are aching?’ Immediately another line came—I found notebook and pencil and discovered I was writing a poem.

“How long I sat there I cannot say, but verse by verse the inspiration came until it was finished and when I read the lines through I knew with a deep sense of gratitude and thanksgiving that God had indeed spoken to me that morning.

“And so it proved. It was requested—together with another poem—‘Answered prayer’—and was produced—beautifully illustrated in Golden Thought Series under the title of Solace, A Little Book of Comfort. Much blessing attended the publication of this little book. Over the world it went until more than one hundred and fifteen thousand copies had sold and countless messages were received, but I shall never know here, all that resulted through His leading that May Sunday morning.

“It is the first time I have told this story thus. I do so now hoping hearts that are lonely, troubled, bereaved, disheartened perhaps, may be helped and find solace and comfort through renewed faith and trust. ‘God is able to use you according to His power and not according to your weakness.’”

Here is the poem:

Oh Father, do You know when hearts are aching;

     When summer days have fled and north winds blow,

Skies heavy, gray, and days so dark and lonely?

                 “My Child, I know.”

Oh Father, do You care when hours are empty,

     Empty of all that made this world so fair—

When blessings once so precious, now have faded?

                 “My Child, I care.”

Oh Father, must we trust when ties are broken,

     When loves of earth once strong and deep have gone,

And strange unwelcome things beset our pathway?

                 “Yes, Child, trust on.”

“Be of good cheer, Let not your heart be troubled.

     Nothing can touch your life unless I will;

I, who have shared Life’s loneliness and sorrow,

                 Say ‘Peace be still.’”

Call Back Vol. 1, pages 118-121

Frustrated Again and Again

Not many days go by before I am reminded once more of the Christian poetess, Frances Ridley Havergal. It may be while singing one of her inspiring hymns on a Sunday morning at Church; it may while reading a daily devotional and I am inspired by one of her poems; or it may be while searching through our bookshelf for a Christian biography to read between other tasks. But how many of us realize that this exceptional Christian author was tempted just as we are: sometimes lonely, often suffering from discouragement, fighting illness, and now and then, deeply frustrated. Frances was not hesitant in sharing these experiences with her readers as she does in the following excerpt from one of her many letters:

“I have just had such a blessing in the shape of what would have been only two months ago a really bitter blow to me.  And now it is actual accession of joy, because I find that it does not even touch me!

“I was expecting a letter from America, enclosing $70.00 now due to me, and possibly news that ‘Bruey’ was going on like steam and my other book pressingly wanted.  The letter has come, and, instead of all this, my publisher has failed in the universal crash.  He holds my written promise to publish only with him as the condition of his launching me.  So this is not simply a little loss, but an end of all my American prospects of either cash, influence, or fame, at any rate for a long time to come.

“Two months ago, this would have been a real trial to me, for I had built a good deal on my American prospects; now ‘Thy will be done’ is not a sigh but a song!”

The next year another more serious set-back came just when she was full of spiritual vitality and planning a heavy schedule of writing.  Her sister, Marie, gives the details of the fire which destroyed her manuscripts:

“Very patiently had she prepared for press many sheets of manuscript music in connection with the Appendix to Songs of Grace and Glory.  Well do I remember that day it was completed.  We were at home, and she came down from her study with a large roll of post, and with holiday glee exclaimed, ‘There it is all done!  And now I am free to write a book.’

“Only a week passed, when the mail brought her the news: ‘Messrs. Henderson’s premises were burned down this morning about four o’clock.  We fear the whole of the stereotypes of your musical edition are destroyed as they were busy printing it.  It will be many days before the debris will be sufficiently cooled to ascertain how the stereotype plates stand.’

“Further news confirmed the loss: ‘Your musical edition, together with the paper sent for printing it, has been totally destroyed.’  On the same sheet Frances wrote to her sisters in Worcestershire: ‘The signification hereof to me is that, instead of having finished my whole work, I have to begin again de novo, and I shall probably have at least six months of it.  The greater part of the manuscript of my Appendix is simply gone, for I had kept no copy whatever, and have not even a list of the tunes.  Every chord of my own will have to be reproduced; every chord of anyone else re-examined and revised.  All through my previous Songs of Grace and Glory work, and my own books, I had always taken the trouble to copy off every correction on to a duplicate proof, but finding I never gained any practical benefit, I did not as I considered it waste time in this case.

“‘Of most of the new work, which has cost me the winter’s labor, I have not even a memorandum left, having sent everything to the printers.  However, it is so clearly “Himself hath done it,” that I can only say “Thy way not mine, O Lord.”

“‘I only tell you how the case stands, not as complaining of it, only because I want you to ask that I may do what seems drudgery quite patiently, and that I may have health enough for it, and that He may overrule it for good.  It may be that He has more to teach me before He sets me free to write the two books which I hoped to have begun directly.  Thus I am cut off from the bright stream of successful writing and stopped in all my own plans for this spring. . . . If I did not rejoice in letting Him to do what He will with me, when He thus sends me such very marked and individual dealing, I should feel that my desire for sanctification, for His will to be done in me, had been merely nominal, or fancied and not real.’”—Call Back Vol. 1, pages 229, 230.

Martha Snell Nicholson Calls Back

The future, ah the future! Starting out on life’s journey, how many times have God’s children dreamed of what they would become …. someday!! And then they find themselves face to face with life’s stark reality and their childish dreams evaporate overnight.

This was the case with the Christian poetess, Martha Snell Nicholson. Her own words will best describe the secret of her serenity of spirit and her contagious cheerfulness that overflowed into verse:

“Looking back over nearly a lifetime of illness, I am thanking God for these pain-filled years…. When I stood at the beginning and strained my eyes to see down the dim path ahead, I was sure it would be strewed with roses. When pain and sorrow came, I could not understand, but now as I look back the long road which lies so clearly behind me, I see that His hand was upon me all the way.

“Never strong as a child, I broke down very early in young womanhood. I spent the ensuing seven years in bed, most of the time with TB, then up off and on, one sick spell after another, seven operations besides fifteen minor ‘carvings.’ It seems that almost every disease has had a try at me. For the last twenty years I have been on the shelf, able to attend church only once during that period.

“They have brought me gifts—those weary years. I do not enjoy sickness or suffering, or the nervous agony and exhaustion that are harder to bear than physical pain. And an invalid must bury so many dear dreams which have death struggles and refuse to die decently and quietly. But God has a way of taking away our toys, and after we have cried for a while like disappointed children, He fills our hands with jewels, which ‘cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire.’

“I recall that after I had been sick for several years, I thought, in my foolishness, that I had learned the lessons which God wanted to teach me, and that He would let me go out into the world and work for Him. As though one could ever learn all that God has to teach! No, I am still sick. I do not understand why I must still be an invalid. I no longer expect to understand. If I did, there would be no need for faith. Enough that He knows why, and some day He will tell me about it—why it was best for me and best for His cause.

“Then came the hardest blow of all. Nearly nine years ago, He called my beloved husband and left me here alone, crippled with arthritis, facing cancer, and with dimming eyesight and other illness into which I need not go. Then indeed I learned about God and that His strength is made perfect in weakness and that He can supply all my needs ‘according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.’ It is one thing to think so—it is another thing to have found out by actual experience that it is so, to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that when you go down into the valley, you can clasp His hand—that you never need to be alone or afraid for He will go with you on all your paths—and that His arm is strong enough to carry you. It is blessed beyond words to know these things.”

Before she was called Home, Martha Snell Nicholson experienced an even more crippling form of illness—Parkinson’s disease. Out of her suffering was born her poem entitled, “Tranquility”:

Holds fast my hand.

My life is molded by the One

Who shaped the land.

The Mind which planned the march of suns

Can understand

The petty trials of my day;

Who hollowed out the cup that holds

The mighty sea,

And keeps the waves in check, can give

Tranquility

In my small storms. Shall not the One

Who holds in place

The Milky Way, keep me each day

And by His grace

Present me perfect, faultless there

Before His face?

 Used by permission of the Wesleyan Advocate

Maybe some who read this blog empathize completely with this poetess, because they have traveled the same path she did, or maybe a loved one is being overwhelmed by the same sense of futility and frustration as this invalid experienced. If so, may this testimony reassure you that God is there with you even in the darkest hours.