The prison | FERN YARNICK

June 13, 2008 01:51 pm

— BY FERN YARNICK
FYARNICK@YAHOO.COM

Man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart.
1 Samuel 16:7

Picture two men – one a deeply religious man of God standing on the shore of a vast ocean, drinking in the whole realm of the heavens.
The beauty of the sunset and the pounding surf stir his soul.
As the colors fade from the sky and the stars begin to appear, he is moved to write of the love of God.
The other man sits in his lonely cell. He has existed in the small area for many years.
His mind is disoriented, his body wracked by years of neglect and solitude.
He is incarcerated because his sanity has left him.
How could he know the love of God?
One of these men wrote the following:
Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made;
Were every stalk on earth a quill
And every man a scribe by trade –
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry
Nor could the scroll contain the whole
Though stretched from sky to sky.
When they lowered the man they called insane into the grave, these words were found scribbled on the wall of his cell.
From his lonely cell, the man could find nothing of beauty and he was denied the freedom to see the outside world.
Yet sometime during his life, he felt God so close and so real that he penned the words written above. He has to share them with the world.
Would you and I have picked the correct man?
Man looks on the outward appearance, while God looks on the heart.