the tug of it; for gibson

A few hours ago I was riding home from the hospital, carrying sadness and grief for my friends Beth and Daniel. Their baby Gibson had not been healed to go to his home here on earth as we had all hoped. Gibson had gone to his heavenly home, to be with God.

While we were at the hospital, my dad, not knowing anything that was going on here in Austin, sent me a poem that his grandmother, Mabel Odell Jackson has written long ago. It is called “The Tug of It”. I read it as we drove home. It goes like this:

A bright, young lad, one cold, cloudy day,
       Went out in the meadow to play.
He tossed up his kite and his voice rang aloud,
       As upward and upward it went.
He stood there amazed as upward he gazed,
       For soon it was lost in a cloud.
A passerby said, “My boy tell me why
       You hold to a kite way up in the sky?”
Then answered this boy, his face strangely lit,
      “I still feel the tug of it.” 

No, I was not there when the baby was born,
      In the manger so dimly lit.
No, I was not there to follow the star,
      But I still feel the tug of it.
No, I was not there when He walked among men,
      And down with the lowly did sit.
No, I was not there when they crowned Him with thorns,
      But I still feel the tug of it.
No, I was not there when they crucified Him,
      And nailed Him to the tree.
No, I never saw the old rugged cross,
      But the tug of it’s still with me.
No, I never walked on the golden streets,
      Nor of the angels’ band been a part.
I never gazed on the nail-peirced hands,
      But the tug of it’s all in my heart.