hi, Cherry... i want to share something i wrote back in 2006... it was something i wrote for a homeschooling newsletter... it is based on Robert Frost's Nothing Gold Can Stay... your recent entry made me think of it... one caveat: it is written from the Christian perspective and does reference the bible... i hope it's okay to share... here is is:
MONDAY, JULY 24, 2006 Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf, So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day Nothing gold can stay.
--Robert Frost
I have adored this poem by Robert Frost for many years. I have called it to mind many an early morning during late-spring outdoor Bible readings or journaling sessions. The sun is rising, casting a golden glow all over nature… birds are chirping, and only nature seems to be awake. And I want the moment to last forever. And it is but a moment that perfection lives. Soon I begin to hear car doors slamming, car engines starting up, cars driving away. The golden moment has passed.
Now that I am a parent, this poem has come to mean even more to me than beautiful golden mornings. I have witnessed a myriad of golden moments during the different stages of my children's lives: When Jonathan would yell, "Mommy!" as I walked through the front door after a trip to the supermarket. When Caleb snuggles up to me and says, "Mommy, I want to be by you." Or when Jonathan and Caleb don their "hiking gear" and back pack through the mounds of dirt in our backyard.
Every golden moment of the various stages of my children's ever-moving lives fades to other even more golden moments. And each golden moment--each fascinating stage--whether an hour or three months in length, is truly but a moment--passing much too quickly for this mother of the two most beautiful boys ever. But as nature has shown me, and as the poem goes, "nothing gold can stay."
"Nothing gold can stay." These words linger deep within my mind… and they hauntingly echo their assured truth in the middle of some nights as I lay in bed considering how quickly my baby boys are growing. When I first became a parent, other more experienced parents would tell me, "Enjoy every moment. Time passes quickly and they do grow so fast," or "Time really flies-next thing you know, they'll be going to college." But there was no real urgency in the way they would share these words--which led me to dismiss these words as cliché… just something someone says to new parents. Not one person ever took me aside to let me know just how serious he or she was. I believe I have been deceived!
Is it really true that nothing gold can stay? Is this really true? Yes. In the natural sense, it is true that nothing gold can stay. A green apple ripens to an enticing red--and is indeed in it's golden moment, ready for eating… but if the apple is not eaten, it will continue to ripen, and then over ripen… it does not stop to rest in its state of perfection--its golden moment. It continues until it rots. Hence nothing gold can stay.
But what about my children? Surely my boys are more than an apple, leaf, flower or sunny morning. Isn't there more to life than starting out green, ripening to the "age of perfection," and then slowly withering toward the twilight years until death takes us altogether? For the one who puts his hope in Christ, the answer is a reverberating yes! Yes, yes, yes! A celebration of "yeses" because of our blessed assurance--that promise that causes us to catch our breath when we grasp but an inkling of it all--from 2 Corinthians 5:17, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! And from 2 Corinthians 4:16, Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.
Though the natural part of man continues through the stages of life under natural law, not so the spirit. For those of us who put our hope in Christ-who descended from heaven to earth to be born of the Virgin Mary, who led a sinless life, who took on the sin of all mankind, who was crucified, buried and who overcame death by way of His resurrection, for those who are born in spirit, our "golden moment" is yet to come. And it is a golden moment that can and will stay.
A line in a well-known hymn says, "When we've been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise, then when we first begun." And this is how it will be--no aging, rotting, withering, dying. We look forward to an existence of complete "golden-ness."
Until then, nothing gold can stay...
CHERRY: Enjoy, cherish these moments, because they do go by so quickly! in Latin: Tempus Fugit!!!
But know this--even though they grow to eventually leave you, when you do live out many golden moments while raising your children, there is a benefit... even though they do grow to become independent of you, they come back to you in a new way... as adults, (mine are 17 and 21)... they choose you... and it is beautiful... the relationship i have with each of my sons is truly golden... i have had many difficult moments with each of them through the living years, but today--i cannot express how sweet, loving, beautiful (put in any adjective that is positive here) we have it... and i know it's because of all of those moments in their childhood...
