Trust, a Blessed Comfort! (Brahms, German Requiem; John 16:21; Mark Lowry, Buddy Greene)

When you kiss your little baby, you have kissed he face of God.

Johannes Brahms loved his mother.
But I don’t know
how the German verbs, trôsten and trauen
are related.

What would have become of me
if I had not been able
to trust my mother?
In spite of every grief,
she was always there for me,
listening for my needs
and running to sooth them.

That comfort, that trust
I remember to this day.
And I experience the same comfort
whenever I depend on someone to the point
where if they didn’t come through I’d fall on my face,
and I trust them, and they do come through!

That’s the solid principle of collaboration in work—
depending on one another,
trusting one another,
to come through.

One solid comfort we can gain in this world!

So, projecting this meditation into the future,
beyond my own lifetime,
because I’m worried about those I leave behind—

You have sadness now,
but I will see you again,
and your heart will rejoice,
and your joy no one shall take from you.

Look at me.
I have a little more time for worry and work,
and I have found great comfort

I want to comfort you
as one whom their mother comforts.

Or the mother herself in her travail—

Die Mutter trauert, because her hour is come,
but as soon as she is delivered,
she remembers no more the sorrow,
for joy that a child is born into the world.

Poems for Advent 2017