You have broken my heart. I cannot stop thinking about you. I love you even though I have met you only once. Others may have given up on you not realizing your potential but I see something in you. You made me cry but you have helped me to realize what is important in...
Though I believe the resurrection truth, that good triumphant in the end is known. Yet all of life seems twisted so by grief that joy and sorrow have together grown. So to endure is all that I can give. Enjoyment is a flash of rare delight. While only Christ...
I bring an unaccustomed wine To lips long parching next to mine, And summon them to drink…. And so I always bear the cup If, haply, mine may be the drop Some pilgrim thirst to slake, - If, haply, any say to me, “Unto the little, unto me,” When I at last...
Prayers like gravel flung at the sky's window, hoping to attract the loved one’s attention. But without visible plaits to let down for the believer to climb up, to what purpose open that far casement? I would have refrained long since but that peering once through my...
With thee on board, each sailor is a king, Nor I mere captain of my vessel then, But heir of earth and heaven, eternal child; Daring all truth, nor fearing anything; Mighty in love, the servant of all men; Resenting nothing, taking rage and blare Into the Godlike...
Now I am here, what thou wilt do with me None of my books will show: I read, and sigh, and wish I were a tree: For sure then I should grow To fruit or shade: at least some bird would trust Her household to me, and I should be just. George Herbert (1593-1633),...
In making victims we are judged, until we turn to the saving Victim. We are insistently and relentlessly, in Jerusalem, confronted… with a victim who is our victim. When we make victims, when we embark on condemnation, exclusion, violence, the diminution or oppression...
Search me, O God, and known my heart today; Try me, O Lord, and know my thoughts, I pray; See if there be some wicked way in me: Cleanse me from every sin and set me free. I praise you, Lord, for cleansing me from sin; Fulfil your word, and make me pure within;...
While faith is with me, I am blest; It turns my darkest night to day; But, while I clasp it to my breast, I often feel it slide away. What shall I do if all my love, My hopes, my toil, are cast away? And if there be no God above To hear and bless me when I...
… My life is in the falling leaf: O Jesus, quicken me. My life is like a faded Leaf’ My harvest dwindled to a husk; Truly my life is void and brief And tedious in the barren dusk; My life is like a frozen thing, No bud or greenness can I see: Yet rise it shall – the...
Two mites, two drops (yet all her house and land) Falls from a steady heart, though trembling hand. The others’ wanton wealth foams high and brave. The others cast away, she only gave. Richard Crashaw (1613-49), The Widow’s Mite.
From all my lame defeats and oh! much more From all the victories that I seemed to score; From cleverness shot forth on thy behalf At which, while angels weep, the audience laugh; From all my proofs of thy divinity, Thou, who wouldst give no sign, deliver me. ...