Poems and readings to reflect on and shape your faith
How to use Faith Shapers:
- Click on ROOMS to pick a theme
- Search for an author/poet by name
- Explore more by using the tags
- Feel free to share Faith Shapers
USE FAITH SHAPERS FOR:
- Prayer or in time of personal need
- Resource for a group meeting
- Illustrations for a devotional address
- Material for a church study course
Latest Posts
Faith-shaping Poets
No Results Found
The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.
No Results Found
The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.
Our Father: Hallowed on Earth as in Heaven
As form in sculpture is the prisoner
As form in sculpture is the prisoner of the hard rock, so in everyday life it is the plain facts and natural happenings that conceal God and reveal him to us little by little under the mind’s tooling. R.S. Thomas (1913-2000), 'Emergings', Frequencies, 1978.
God’s point of view
… All through history the great brush has not rested nor the paint dried; yet what that eye looking coolly, or, as we now, through the tears’ lenses, ever saw this work and it was not finished. R.S. Thomas (1913-2000), Poetry for Supper, 1958.
What is the purpose?
In the beginning God created the earth, and he looked upon it in his cosmic loneliness. And God said, ‘Let us make creatures out of mud, so mud can see what we have done.’ And God created every living thing that now moveth and one was man. Mud as man alone could...
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild...
The Bible: Bestowed Word of God
No Results Found
The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.
Storehouse of Life
The chief and top of his knowledge consists in the book of books, the storehouse and magazine of life and comfort, the Holy Scriptures. There he sucks and lives. In the Scriptures he finds four things; precepts for life, doctrines for knowledge, examples for...
Jesus Christ: Crucified God in Person
God’s hidden wisdom revealed
All is best, though we oft doubt What th’unsearchable dispose Of Highest Wisdom brings about, And ever best found in the close. Oft he seems to hide his face, But unexpectedly returns, And to his faithful champion hath in place Bore witness gloriously; whence Gaza...
Water into Wine
These people know me only in the thin hymns of the mind, in the arid sermons and prayers. I am the live God, nailed fast to the old tree of a nation by its unreal tears. I thirst, I thirst for the spring water. Draw it up for me from your heart’s well and I will...
Where has he Gone?
With many tears I went in search of him, Climbing high mountains which did still ascend, And gave me echoes when I called my friend; Through cities vast and charnel-houses grim, And high cathedrals where the light was dim, Through books and arts and works without an...
The wise men’s dilemma; a life or death
… were we led all that way for Birth or death? There was a Birth certainly, We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were different; this birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. We returned to our places,...
Humankind: Sinful, Rebellious and Faithless
For those tears I died
You said you'd come and share all my sorrows You said you'd be there for all my tomorrows I came so close from sending you away But just like you promised You came here to stay I just had to pray And Jesus said, "Come to the water Stand by my side I know you are...
A failure?
O God, can a man find you when he lies with his face downwards And his nose in the rubble that was his achievement? Is the music playing behind the door of despair? Patrick Kavanagh (1904-67), From Failure Up, 1988.
Know your enemy
Exaggerate each feature until man is Metamorphosized into beast, vermin, insect. Fill in the background with malignant Figures from ancient nightmares – devils, When your icon of the enemy is complete You will be able to kill without guilt, Slaughter without shame....
‘Foolish soul who sinned today’
Canst be idle? Canst thou play, Foolish soul who sinned today? Hast thou tears, or hast thou none? If poor soul, thou hast no tears, Would thou hadst no faults or fears! Who in heart not ever kneels, Neither sin nor Saviour feels. George Herbert...
The Grace of God: Justifying and Converting
No Results Found
The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.
A stricken deer that left the herd
I was a stricken deer that left the herd, Long since with many an arrow deep infixed. My panting side was charged, when I withdrew To seek a tranquil death in distant shades. There was I found by One who had Himself Been hurt by the archers. In his side He bore, And...
Christ-likeness: Progressive Christian Living
Holy Saturday
Not darkness but twilight in which even the best of minds must make its way now. And slowly the questions occur, vague but formidable for all that. We pass our hands over their surface like blind men, feeling for the mechanism that will swing them aside. They yield,...
Where now?
My road calls me, lures me West, east, south and north; Most roads lead men homewards, My road leads me forth. To add more miles to the tally Of grey miles left behind, In quest of that one beauty God put me here to find. John Masefield...
Holy Spirit: in Christian Experience
No Results Found
The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.
The world’s danger
I saw a stable low and very bare, A little child in a manger. The oxen knew him, had him in their care. To men he was a stranger. The safety of the world was lying there And the world’s danger. Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (1861-1907).
Believers: Assured, Called and Prayerful
We freely love
… That thou art happy owe to God; that thou continuest such, owe to thyself, that is to thy obedience; Therein stand…. This was that caution given thee; be advised. God made thee perfect, not immutable; And good he made thee; but to persevere He left it in thy power,...
They also serve who stand and wait
When I consider how my light is spent, ‘ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, and that one talent which is death to hide, lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent to serve therewith my maker, and present my true account, lest he returning chide, Doth...
In his own dungeon
He that has light within his own clear breast May sit i’ the centre, and enjoy bright day, But he that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts Benighted walks under the midday sun; Himself his own dungeon. John Milton (1608-74), Comus (1637).
Scaffolding
Masons, when they start upon a building, Are careful to test out the scaffolding; Make sure that the planks won’t slip at busy joints, Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints. And yet all this comes down when the job’s done Showing off walls of...
The Church: Provisional but Necessary
Anglican clergy called to account
O, when our clergy, at the Dreadful Day, Shall make their audit, when the Judge shall say ‘Give your accounts. What have my lambs been fed? Say, do they all stand sound? Is there none dead By your defaults? Come, shepherds, bring them forth That I may crown your...
Dressed for God
Holiness on the head, Light and perfections on the breast, Harmonious bells below, raising the dead To lead them into life and rest: Thus are true Aarons drest. Profaneness in my head, Defects and darknesse in my breast, A noise of passions ringing me for dead...
The priest, these graces shall possess
Give me the priest, these graces shall possess: Of an Ambassador, the just address, A Father’s tenderness, a Shepherd’s care, A Leader’s courage which the cross can bear, A Ruler’s arm, a Watchman’s wakeful eye, A Pilot’s skill, the helm in storms to ply, A Fisher’s...
Singing with mind and heart
The fineness which a hymn or psalm affords, Is, when the soul unto the lines accords. He who craves all the mind, And all the soul, and strength, and time, If the words only rhyme, Justly complains, that somewhat is behind To make his verse, or write a hymn in...
The Mission of God
No Results Found
The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.
The words of the prophets
People talking without speaking People hearing without listening ‘Fools’, said I, ‘You do not know Silence like a cancer grows.’ The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls. Paul Simon (1942-), 1964.
Moral Justice: a Vision of God’s Kingdom
No Results Found
The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.
Newspapers?
Why do we buy a newspaper For it’s plain for us to see The pulp that it is made of Was better as a tree. George Knowles (1937- ), Pit to Priest, 2007.
Glory: Now and Then, Here and There
Eternity awaits you
I have seen the sun break through to illuminate a small field for a while, and gone my way and forgotten it. But that was the pearl of great price, the one field that had the treasure in it. I realised now that I must give all that I have to possess it. Life is not...
The Last Post
It is the last post of this life and the reveille of the next. Death is the end of our present life, It is the parting from loved ones; It is the setting out into the unknown. We overcome death by accepting it as the will of a loving God, by...
Mourning dress
Shall I wear mourning for my soldier? Dead! I, a believer? Give me red! Or give me royal purple for the King at whose high court my love is visiting. Dress me in green for growth, for life made new; For skies his dear feet march, dress me in blue; In white, for his...
Unbelieving Saturday
A solemn, sombre, leaden Saturday – the muscles and joints of the day lie slack. Silence entombed in stillness – dread Sabbath. Who can be a believer on this day? I’ve come so far to shed tears here at last in the city of my heart. No one stirs. Faith creeps...