The undergirding facts were joy and love. And because of that we did not care how poor, how crowded, how (humanly speaking) precarious our situation. Sometimes we were called upon to do the things we thought we were least fitted for, and discovered that by some power not of our making we could do them. We learned to trust, not merely in our human brothers and sisters, but in what had called us together and gathered us all out of our former ways, and in what lay behind and above and underneath everything: surrender and service to our Master, Jesus. His love upheld us.

Read from a collection of Jane Tyson Clement’s poetry, No One Can Stem the Tide.