POEM (Repeat 2015) "When God Wants a Man"

‘When God Wants a Man’ 

When God wants to drill a man and thrill a man and skill a man…
When God wants to mould a man to play the noblest part;
When He yearns with all His heart to create so great and bold a man
That all the world shall praise,
Watch His methods, watch His ways!

How He ruthlessly perfects whom He royally elects; how He hammers and hurts him,
And with mighty blows coverts him into frail shapes of clay that only God understands.
How his tortured heart is crying and he lifts beseeching hands....
How He bends but never breaks when His good He undertakes.
How He uses whom He chooses…. with every purpose fuses him;
By every art induces him to try His splendour out
God knows what He’s about!

When God wants to take a man and shake a man and wake a man…
When God wants to make a man to do the Father’s will;
When He yearns with all His soul to create him large and whole…
With what cunning He prepares him… how He goads and never spares him!

How He whets him, He frets him and in poverty, begets him…
How often He disappoints whom He sacredly anoints!
With what wisdom He will hide him;  never minding what betide him…
Makes him lonely so that only God’s high messages shall reach him…
So that He may surely teach him what His heavenly Father planned.

When God wants to name a man and tame a man to do His heavenly best….
When He tries the highest test that His reckoning may bring…
How He reins him and restrains him so his body scarce contains him…
When He fires him and inspires him, keeps him yearning, 
Ever burning for the tantalizing goal.
Lures and lacerates his soul… sets a challenge for His spirit;
Draws it highest, then he is near it!
Then makes a jungle, then he clears it;
Makes a desert that he fears it, if he can…
So does God make a man!

Then to test His Spirit’s wrath, He throws a mountain in his path, 
Puts a bitter choice before him and relentlessly stands o’er him…
Climb or perish, so He says…. But watch His purpose, watch His ways!
God’s plan is wondrously kind… could we understand His mind?
Fools are they who call God blind!

When his feet are torn and bleeding; yet His Spirit mounts unheeding…
Blazing newer paths and finds....
Lo, the crisis, lo, the shouts that would call the leader out…
When the people need salvation does he rise to lead the nation;
Then does God show His plan… and the world has found its man! 

Author Unknown