by George MacDonald and Betty K. Aberlin
In 1880, George MacDonald, the Scottish poet, novelist and preacher, in the wake of the deaths of two of his children, published A Book of Strife in the Form of the Diary of an Old Soul . This book, which unites grief and hope in hard-won faith, contains a poem for every day of the year. In the first edition of this classic collection there was a blank page opposite each page of poems. Readers were invited to write their own reflections on the “white page.” MacDonald wrote: “Let your white page be ground, my print be seed, growing to golden ears, that faith and hope may feed.
