Favorite: Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Remembering Elizabeth Barret Browning who was born on March 6, 1806.  This is my favourite poem of hers.

How do I love thee?

Let me count the ways.

   I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

   My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of everyday's

   Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

   I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee purely as they turn from Praise.

   I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

   I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath,

   Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

Elizabeth Browning

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Someone You Should Know: Robert Dick Wilson

Wow. He's amazing.  The post below caught my eye and I had to google the guy. As a student in Princeton, Mr Wilson could read the NT in 20 languages!  Super smart? Probably, but the secret seems to be knowing how to use every spare moment of his time.

Robert Dick Wilson learned 45 languages, including Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, as well as all the languages into which the Scriptures had been translated up to 600 AD. Asked how he accomplished so much, Wilson responded,

"Well, you see, I used my spare time. When I went out for a walk I would take a grammar with me, and when I sat down to rest, I would take out the book, study it a little, and learn what I could. I made up my mind that I wanted to read the great classics in the originals, so I just learned the languages in order to do that.

"I would read a grammar through, look up the examples, making notes as I went along, and I wouldn’t pass by anything until I could explain it. I never learned long lists of words, but I would read a page through, recall the words I didn’t know, and then look them up. I read anything that I thought would be interesting to me if it were in English. I got so interested in the story that I was unconscious of the labor–as a man is interested in his roses, and doesn’t think of the thorns. So I learned Greek, Latin, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Biblical Aramaic, Syriac, Arabic, and so on."

-- Robert Dick Wilson
FB, Berean Call, November 15th

Robert Dick Wilson's Short Biography on Wikipedia

H.S. Candle in the Cemetery

H.S. meaning Holy Spirit...as in Holy Spirit perfumed candles. Found these on my parent's cemetery plot. I think the gift-giver was thinking of a verse in the Bible:  "And when he had taken the book, the four beasts and four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints." (Revelation 5:8)

The gift-giver is misinformed: Leaving a burning candle on a grave does not cut-it as far as the above verse. The resultant smoke from these candles is not the PRAYER of a saint (biblically defined as a human being, not an inanimate/stone object; one who believes in Christ, and is His follower) which is the main ingredient of the collected "odours" in the above verse. 
The candles certainly smell good; and make great room fresheners when lighted. But that is all.

A note of encouragement:  the prayers of God's people are cumulative.  God knows and remembers people's prayers, collecting them in golden vials or containers. 
Caveat: they do not get anyone into heaven (only Christ can do that through his atoning death on Calvary and must be individually believed by faith alone), but they DO amount to something. God's answers may be instantaneous, or a long-time coming. 

dear Pup posing with them, LoL

23.11.24.17
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