God is as near as the air, as thy heart.

Today in meeting, I gave a message... which surprised me...

I don't know the calendar well. I miss all sorts of anniversaries... but I found my self thinking of a friend who had died, around this time of year, and we buried her on a rainy day such as this.

I often quote this friend. She was as gentle and kind a soul as ever lived, she lived in constant thought of the path of God and no one who knew her missed that she was a near perfect expression of faith and love. She also lived in fear of God. As she was nearing a painful death, she began to fear that she had not earned God's love. Her faith taught her that no one knows if they are "saved".

I heard her say, "help me, I am afraid..." her husband took her, so young and too soon, into his arms and she died.

When she was a young child, she was, like many of her class in England, sent to boarding school. It was a loveless place. She would stand on a chair, I seem to remember her telling me, to look to the horizon's clouds and imagine her village under them. No one was kind enough to tell her to look to the home in her heart, her mother and father's love, though far away and seeming not to understand that she wished to be home with them.

She became convinced of a hard and sometimes cold faith, that was not kind enough to tell her not to look to God on a distant horizon, but to look with certainty to that God within her, that was her love and complete in love with her.

If her husband, and my dear friend, my dear brother chances to read this... I know that, I am so certain in my soul... that like the poem by Apollonaire... that as thee held her and she left thee, not to go very far at all, but to live with thee in thy heart ... I am convinced in my heart and soul, that she flew... and flies forever, and holds thy heart in hers in confidence and love of God and thee.