TRANSFORMATION by Agnes M. Machar

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 21, 1882

TRANSFORMATION

By Agnes M. Machar

We planted the bare brown stems one day When the autumn winds blew cold, And the dying leaves fell mournfully In their tarnished red and gold.

And you wondered whether they lived at all, Those stems so brown and bare, With never a leaf or a bud so small, To tell us that life was there.

And yet when the spring hath blessed the earth, And June smiles warm and bright, Their glory of roses shall wake to birth And glow in the summer light!

So we lay them down in their lowly bed, The dear ones we cherished so, And night would tell us that they are dead, And more we may not know.

But faith looks on to the joyful spring That she tells us shall yet be ours, And the new life's glorious blossoming Into fair eternal flowers.

For the secret of life is God's to keep, Not the wisest sage can tell How it thrills through the fibers that seem to sleep, And pours through each hidden cell.

Then well may we wait with patience here, Nor weep o'er the churchyard sod; We shall find the lost whom we hold so dear, In the glorious garden of God.

—Agnes M. Machar, in Christian Weekly.