The Harvest


What though I stop a dozen times a day

To dress the same doll in the same pink hat,

To move my favorite lamps, rescue the cat,

Or find some plaything that has gone astray?

What though the walls I washed so clean and white

But yesterday, tell tiny tales today

Of busy fingers, reaching in their play

To touch a picture or turn on the light?

The days toll into months, the months to year,

And e’er we know it, we shall wish in vain

For precious days of childhood once again;

And though we search for them in earnest tears,

Our children will be grown, ‘twill be too late

To mend their broken toys and dry their eyes,

And pull their hungry fingers from the pies,

And run to meet them at the garden gate.

Teach me, O God, to know from day to day

That all the floors I sweep, the clothes I mend

Do not compare with the sweet time I spend

Teaching my little ones to praise and pray;

That when I face Thee, and my fruit I bring,

And Thou dost ask me where my soul did glean,

I may not have a little house, swept clean,

To be alone my lifetime offering.

But may I have the children Thou didst loan,

And may I know that they have followed Thee

Because they saw Thy love and grace through me,

And learned to know my Saviour as their own.


by Barbara C. Ryberg