Poem April 3, 1976 Issue

UP AND DOWN

II Kings 4:18—37

J. Thomas Black

She was already praying and comforting and holding
him tight.
But as soon as her only son died,
she went up with him.
Where?
To the prophet's room—to a higher, more spiritual
view of God and man.
Then she went down.
Where?
In lowliness like the "woman...which was a sinner"^{Luke 7:37.}
to the very feet
of the man of God,
reaching meekly and fervently
for even more of the eternal Christ.
When Elisha came, he also went up, twice, and down,
Letting Truth stretch out his alert, submitting thought
to see that boy exactly as he saw himself—
God's emphatic reflection.
"Take up thy son," he said to her.
She, in great humility before the Christ-idea,
accepted this high idea of sonship,
and embraced anew her son.

We don't know much about that day.
It was probably hot, as usual,
with hundreds of others shuffling and rushing
this way and that.
But at least two of them that day broke
the common dimensions of horizontal matter-thought
To go both down and up in meek
reaching for Christly heights
and depths
that proved God's love.

J. Thomas Black

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