God save the people

Flowers of thy Heart, Oh God, are they

let them not pass like weeds away

Their heritage a sunless day

God save the people  ..

Last week, my sister sent me a beautiful photo of tiger lilies growing in her yard.  She admired them and wanted to show them to me.  Francesca is a sensitive lover of  poetry, art, animals and natural beauty. She saw the flowers and wrote me that they reminded her of this Tiger lilies blog.  And, then, this morning, she wrote me that someone had cut down all her tiger lilies, and sent a picture of the flowerless stalks.

I was sad to see they had been cut down. Only an innocent child would do that, I thought. They might have been thinking that flowers are there for the picking, not realizing that they were killing a beautiful life. I couldn't help thinking, that we are like those flowers, as the poet of the famous God Save the People, made famous in Godspell.  

We are flowers of His Heart, and yet lately the blood of the innocent, Israeli, Syrian, Iraqi, Iranian all are passing away like weeds. I wept at the news that the three Israeli teens were killed.  We had all hoped somehow miraculously they would have been found alive.  

Suddenly, in that news, the flowers in my heart felt more like the dead stumps of my sister's decapitated flowers.  The words to this song from Godspell are stinging my heart.  I am brokenhearted at this news and find the only solace is to cling to the image of my sister's lovely flowers.  

God Save the People

When wilt thou save the people?
O God of mercy, when?
The people, Lord, the people,
Not thrones and crowns, but men!
Flowers of thy heart, O God, are they;
let them not pass like weeds away
Their heritage a sunless day
God save the people

Shall crime bring crime forever,
Strength aiding still the strong?
Is it thy will, O Father,
that men shall toil for wrong?
No, say thy mountains; No, say thy skies;
man's clouded sun shall brightly rise,
and songs be heard, instead of sighs,
God save the people!

When wilt thou save the people?
O God of mercy, when?
The people, Lord, the people!
Not thrones and crowns, but men!
God save the people; thine they are,
thy children as thy angels fair;
from vice, oppression and despair,
God save the people!

by Ebenezer Elliott, 1850

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