The Stretcher Bearer

Would you be my stretcher bearers, when I can no longer stand? 
Would you each pick up a corner of my pallet in your hand? 
This burden’s just too heavy, I find I cannot bear 
Its pain, its grief, its sorrow; and so I chance to dare — 
To ask if you would carry me through valleys dark and wide; 
Then set me safely down again where peace and hope abide. 
God said His yoke was easy and His burden would be light; 
That’s surely why He sent you each to lead me through the night. 
And now I must lift others and the burdens they may bring; 
I’ll be a stretcher bearer, carrying wounded for the King.

This poem is sometimes credited to Thomas Albert Crawford (1897-1980), but his is a different poem that begins “My stretcher is one scarlet stain” – written in 1916, apparently after he was wounded at the Battle of the Somme in France. In her book Diamonds in the Dust: 366 Sparkling Devotions, Joni Eareckson Tada credits the above poem to Bev Engeldinger. I have no information on this author.

The pain passes, but the beauty remains

Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) was a French impressionist painter who helped launch the art movement called "Impressionism". In the 1890's Renoir began a battle with rheumatoid arthritis, which eventually disfigured his hands and damaged his joints. He was confined to a wheelchair for much of the later years of his life. However, he continued to paint. 

One day while watching Renoir paint, Henri Matisse (1869–1954), a friend and also an artist, asked him, "Auguste, why do you continue to paint when you are in such pain?" 

Renoir replied, "The pain passes, but the beauty remains." 

Whatever one thinks of Renoir the man or his paintings, one must certainly admire his attitude. He had learned a lesson many seem to not learn. "The pain passes, but the beauty remains." 

Renoir is also reported as saying, "For me, a painting must be a pleasant thing, joyous and pretty — yes, pretty. There are too many unpleasant things in life for us to fabricate still more."