CMP Review 2024-04-14

“Let them grow up, too, with the shout of a King in their midst,” writes Charlotte Mason in Parents and Children. “There are, in this poor stuff we call human nature, founts of loyalty, worship, passionate devotion, glad service, which have, alas! to be unsealed in the earth-laden older heart, but only ask place to flow from the child’s. There is no safeguard and no joy like that of being under orders, being possessed, controlled, continually in the service of One whom it is gladness to obey.”

What of those who had the King physically in their midst? In John 11:54 we read that Jesus went to a city called Ephraim. “Blest men of Ephraim who saw the Light!” reflects Miss Mason. She imagines how they would have greeted the King and His twelve peers. Pennons, broideries, and costly carpets? Surely that is what founts of loyalty and passionate devotion would set out.

But no. “No blazonry of heralds, trumpets’ blare, proclaim the news that a Great One has arrived. Scarce any turned to watch the meek procession of the Lamb.” Read or hear Mason’s poem “He tarried at Ephraim” which brings fresh light to a single verse, and unseals the earth-laden heart. Find it here.

@artmiddlekauff