Be Thou my vision…

The prayer floats skyward, whispering across the short-shaved crop fields—a plea to see. Here, where the land leaps forward, my gaze is stretched for miles.

O King of my heart…

Here, in the wildness of the high grasslands, the horizon embraces us all with the arms of infinity. Here, the sky is higher than all I might imagine I could reach.

Naught be all else to me…save that Thou art

And it’s that overwhelming Kansas sky that mercifully shrinks the earth, and myself, into proportion. Here, hands cup humble. Here, in this empty land, I empty myself, waiting open with the gentle trust of the fallow fields.

Thou my best thought…by day or by night

Thoughts have swirled around me today, as I journeyed west over the prairies—thoughts as erratic as the tumbleweeds that roll across the roadways and snag themselves in the fences. But all through this land, has He not been the pillar of fire?

Waking or sleeping, Thy Presence my light

The sun is slanting now, the earth sinking toward sleep, but the final burst of glory snatches my breath. Fire-flung rays spill themselves between the closing gates of cloud with a lavish kind of love. In all the fields, every blade of winter wheat stretches tall, its sharp shadow cut behind it. I squint, day-dazzled, but I do not look away from the light.

Riches I heed not, nor vain, empty praise

Thou my inheritance now and always

This is the land of my ancestors. Here they walked the rolling patchwork prairie and wrestled wheat from the stubborn earth. Here they bled their life into this land so strongly that even still, the tie tugs as I cross this land hallowed by heritage. Riches, for them? Wheat was gold and stars were diamonds and the generous earth was worth more than the gems their work-rough hands had no use for.

Thou and Thou only first in my heart

High King of Heaven, my treasure Thou art

The cloud bank is rising, a great purple wall looming over this land. Snow sifts among the rattling winter grasses. So much is stripped away in the prairies. Only the strong silence of faith remains, mysterious and foreign as the wind in the wheat, mundane and faithful as the plow that reaches deep into the darkness of the earth.

High King of Heaven, my victory won

It has been a long road. So many miles and so much pain and the bitterness of the scudding snow.  It took me long—so long—to cease viewing this land as something that must simply be passed through. How many miles did I walk with head down—until I let my soul expand with the ache of this acreage?

May I reach heaven’s joys, O bright heaven’s Son

I am passing beyond the prairies, winding west with the grace of inevitability. Nor do I wish it otherwise. My mountains rise beyond these plains, and it’s on their peaks that I find the answer to all the half-formed questions. But looking back, I can see it—even on these flat fields—I was slowly, slightly, almost imperceptibly, going upwards all along.

Heart of my own heart, whatever befall

—swirl of starlings going who knows where, lonely muttering of dry wheat stalks, fields that dream of spring under the white whirl of winter, this barren beautiful boring brilliant land and the power, the Power, that pulses through—

Still be my vision, O Ruler of all.

This land is His land and His hand is on me, and so I am not afraid to walk west.