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
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- 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
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Our Father: Hallowed on Earth as in Heaven
On the sixth day we came
They do not live in the world, Are not in time and space. From birth to death hurled No word do they have, not one To plant a foot upon, were never in any place. For with names the world was called Out of the empty air, With names was built and walled, Line and circle...
You are my Father
Thou art the peace of all things calm Thou art the place to hide from harm Thou art the light that shines in dark Thou art the heart’s eternal spark Thou art the door that’s open wide Thou art the guest who waits inside Thou art the stranger at the door Thou art the...
Ordinary God
‘Do you believe in a God who can change the course of events on earth?’ ‘No, just the ordinary one.’ A laugh, But not so stupid: events He does not, it seems, determine for the most part. Whether He could is not to the point; it is not stupid to believe in a God who...
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
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Self-authenticating Scriptures
Scripture is indeed self-authenticating….. We feel that the undoubted power of his divine majesty lives and breathes there… a feeling that can be born only of heavenly revelation. I speak of nothing other than what each believer experiences within himself. John Calvin...
Jesus Christ: Crucified God in Person
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Finding God at the cross
Either I determine the place in which I find God, or I allow God to determine the place where he will be found. If it is I who say where God will be, I will always find there a God who in some way corresponds to me, is agreeable to me, fits in with my nature. But if...
Humankind: Sinful, Rebellious and Faithless
Clear Conscience?
My conscience umpire; whom if they will hear, Light after light well used they shall attain, And to the end persisting safe arrive. This my long sufferance, and my day of grace, They who neglect and scorn shall never taste; But be hardened, blind be blinded more, That...
Wise bird
Virtue could see to do what virtue would By her own radiant light, though sun and moon Were in the flat sea sunk. And wisdom’s self Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude, Where with her best nurse Contemplation She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings That in...
Hypocrisy invisible except to God
Hypocrisy – the only evil that walks Invisible except to God alone, By his permissive will, through heaven and earth; And oft, though wisdom wake, suspicion sleeps At wisdom’s gate, and to simplicity Resigns her charge, while goodness thinks no ill Where no ill...
You Turn Away
I am the great sun, but you do not see me, I am your husband, but you turn away. I am the captive, but you do not free me, I am the captain you will not obey. I am the truth, but you will not believe me, I am the city where you will not stay, I am your wife, your...
The Grace of God: Justifying and Converting
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Saved to save others
Are you content, have you no higher aim Than just to gain admittance at the door, In faintest characters to trace your name Among the list of those who die no more? Do you not feel that you are saved to live? Do you not know you are saved to save? Forgiven that you...
Christ-likeness: Progressive Christian Living
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Can you follow? Will you know me?
And yet… Have I been so long time with thee And yet hast thou not known me? Blessed Master, I have known thee On the roads of Galilee. Have I been so long time with thee On the roads of Galilee: Yet, my child, hast thou not know me When I walked upon the sea? Blessed...
Holy Spirit: in Christian Experience
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Experience is worthless?
Experience is a futile teacher, Experience is a prosy preacher, Experience is a fruit tree fruitless, Experience is a shoe-tree, bootless, For sterile wearience and drearience Depend, my boy, upon experience. Experience! Wise men do not need it! Experience! Idiots do...
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).
See Yourself
The times are nightfall, look, their light grows less; The times are winter, watch, a world undone; They waste, they wither worse; they as they run Or bring more or more blazon man's distress, And I not help.... Hope holds to Christ the mind's own mirror out To...
The Church: Provisional but Necessary
In the sacred store the music died
I went down to the sacred store Where I'd heard the music years before But the man there said the music wouldn't play And in the streets the children screamed The lovers cried, and the poets dreamed But not a word was spoken The church bells all were broken And the...
Hymns of pure consent
At a Solemn Music Blest pair of Sirens, pledges of Heaven’s joy, Sphere-born harmonious sisters, Voice and Verse, Wed your divine sounds; and mixed power employ Dead things with inbreathed sense able to pierce, And to our high-raised phantasy present That undisturbed...
The Mission of God
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The act of a good priest
This noble example to his sheep he gave That first he wrought, and afterwards he taught; And it was from the Gospel he had caught Those words, and would add this figure too, That if gold rust, what then would iron do? For if a priest be foul in whom we trust No wonder...
Moral Justice: a Vision of God’s Kingdom
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Respecting women of yesterday today
She was poor but she was honest Victim of a rich man’s game. First, he loved her, then he left her, And she lost her maiden name… It’s the same the whole world over, It’s the poor wot gets the blame, It’s the rich wot gets the gravy, Ain’t it all a bleedin’...
Glory: Now and Then, Here and There
Heaven?
Fish (fly-replete, in depth of June, Dawdling away their wat’ry noon) Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear, Each secret fishy hope or fear. Fish say, they their Stream and Pond; But is there anything Beyond? This life cannot be All, they swear, For how unpleasant, if it...
My unburied spark
Cold in the dust this perished heart may lie, But that which warmed it once will never die! That spark unburied in its mortal frame With living light, eternal, and the same. Thomas Campbell (1777-1844).
Me, immortal diamond?
Across my foundering deck shone A beacon, an eternal; beam. Flesh fade, and mortal trash Fall to residuary worm; world’s wildfire, leave but ash: In a flash, at a trumpet crash, I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and This jack, poor...
God’s Music: Now and Then
Since I am coming to that holy room Where with thy choir of saints for evermore I shall be made thy music; as I come I tune the instrument here at the door, And what I must do then, think here before. While my physicians by their love are grown Cosmographers,...