The fourth year is a dead, dry sea of shifting sands. Each week is a new staggering climb to crest a new mountain of sand, to be greeted again by another vicious valley and one more dead, dry sea of shifting sands.
The third year was painless, the agony of the nothingness, waiting to hit the ground. Surviving the fallout.
The second year began as excited light rays on the sun’s surface, with all the fire, light and heat of a supernova, as they flew across the black, empty expanse of space warming the horizon he loves. There, only to be greeted by the suffocating fog of thick, gray storm clouds. Angry, holding a treasure of thunder and torrent but never letting drop. Dejected, cold, miserable. They tried their best, those light rays from beyond, they tried despite the cold to spread their warmth, their natural gift.
The first year, oh! the high, heady days of the first! Innocent! Brave! Strong! Self-made! Basking in the warmth of earth-source sunshine! Only time, from another vantage point, could see what lie ahead, the winter that would endure many years, bringing tides of dejection, cold, and misery.
Zero hour. Origin. What became of that day. When did it all start. What is the thing – the thing! What brought him this far? Limping now, broken now, bruised and battered, shivering and wretched, head bowed low under the oppressive night of many moonless ages. What brought him here?
The fourth year is near death. It is so weak. The thing that defies all sense and defies all odds … what is left?
But the fourth echoes back a prayer it heard from the first. Him in Whom is grace sufficient. He Who made them in the beginning, Who made them male and female, He is still, always and still, mighty to save!
Mighty to save, both.