1365- CONGRESSO BÍBLICO INTERNACIONAL - THE SERMON- CHAPTER 9 (Year:1851).In Moby Dick;Or The Whale by Herman Melville. (50 )SÉRIES: Contemporâneo.
1365- CONGRESSO BÍBLICO INTERNACIONAL - THE SERMON- CHAPTER 9 (Year:1851).In Moby Dick;Or The Whale by Herman Melville. (50 )SÉRIES: Contemporâneo.
Poem Number 1365
By Sílvia Araújo Motta
Father Mapple uplifted his closed
eyes, and offered a prayer so deeply
devout that he seemed kneeling and
praying at the bottom of the sea.
………..
God is everywhere…
……….
“In black distress, I called my God,
when I could scarce believe him mine,
he bowed his ear to my complaints-
no more the whale did me confine.
With speed he flew to my relief,
as on a radiant dolphin borne;
awful, yet bright, as lightning shone
The face of my Deliverer God.
My song for ever shall record
That terrible, that joyful hour;
I give the glory to my God,
His all the mercy and the power.”
A brief pause ensued; the preacher
slowly turned over the leaves
of the Bible, and at last, folding his
hand down upon the proper page, said:
"Beloved shipmates, clinch the last
verse of the first chapter of Jonah”-
“And Our God had prepared
a great fish to swallow up Jonah."
But all the things that God would have us
do are hard for us to do- remember that-
and hence, he oftener commands us
more than endeavors to persuade.
And if we obey God, we must disobey
ourselves; and it is in this disobeying
ourselves, wherein the hardness
of obeying Our God consists.
"I am a Hebrew,” he cries-
and then- “I fear the Lord
the God of Heaven who hath
made the sea and the dry land!”
I have read by what murky light may be
mine the lesson that Jonah teaches to all
sinners; and therefore to ye, and still
more to me, for I am a sinner than ye.
And now how gladly would I come
down from this mast-head and sit
on the hatches there where you sit,
and listen as you listen,
while some one of you reads me
that other and more awful lesson
which Jonah teaches to me,
as a pilot of the living God.
Woe to him whom this world charms
from Gospel duty! Woe to him who
seeks to pour oil upon the waters when
God has brewed them into a gale!
Woe to him who seeks to please rather
than to appal! Woe to him whose good
name is more to him than goodness!Woe to
him who, in this world,courts not dishonor!
Woe to him who would not be true, even
though to be false were salvation! Yea, woe to
him who as the great Pilot Paul has it while
preaching to others is himself a castaway!
"But oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand
of every woe, there is a sure delight;
and higher the top of that delight, than
the bottom of the woe is deep
And eternal delight and deliciousness will be his,
who coming to lay him down, can say with
his final breath- O Father!- chiefly known to me
by Thy rod- mortal or immortal, here I die.
I have striven to be Thine, more than to be this
world's, or mine own. Yet this is nothing: I leave
eternity to Thee; for what is man that
he should live out the lifetime of his God?"
He said no more, but slowly waving
a benediction, covered his face with his hands,
and so remained kneeling, till all the people had
departed, and he was left alone in the place.
………..
God is everywhere…
……….
Belo Horizonte, Congresso International
27 de julho de 2007.
Palestrante:Padre Geraldo Dôndice Vieira.
Mestrado em Ciências Bíblicas pelo Instituto
Bíblico de Roma.Reitor do Seminário
Arquidiocesano Santo Antônio,
Professor do ITASA.
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