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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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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God’s Love Letter
For Jesus, who is all truthfulness, is hidden there (in Holy Writ), wound in a silken veil of its beautiful words where he may not be known or experienced except with a pure heart. This is simply because truthfulness does not reveal itself to enemies, but only to...
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...
Story of a hotel room
Thinking we were safe – insanity! We went in to make love…. … someone should have warned us That without permanent intentions You have absolutely no protection - If the act is clean, authentic, sumptuous, The concurring deep love of the heart Follows the naked...
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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No scar? No wound?
Hast thou no scar? No hidden scar on foot, or side, or hand? I hear thee sung as mighty in the land, I hear them hail your bright ascendant star, Hast thou no scar? Hast thou no wound? Yet I was wounded by the archers, spent, Leaned me against a tree to die; and...
Holy Spirit: in Christian Experience
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Choose my Path
However dark it be; Lead me by thine own hand, Choose out the path for me. Smooth let it be or rough, It will be still the best; Winding or straight, it leads Right onward to thy rest. Choose thou for me my friends, My sickness or my health; Choose thou my cares for...
Believers: Assured, Called and Prayerful
The web you weave
A noiseless patient spider, I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated, Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding, It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself, Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them. And you O my...
Slight smile
They might not need me, but they might. I’ll let my head be just in sight; A smile as small as mine might be Precisely their necessity. Emily Dickinson (1830-86), Poem 1391.
Take time to be holy
Take time to be holy, speak oft with thy Lord, Abide in him always, and feed on his word. Make friends of God’s children, help those who are weak; Forgetting in nothing his blessing to seek. Take time to be holy, the world rushes on; Spend much time in secret with...
Tell me your Story
Don't throw your arms around me in that way: I know what you tell me is the truth - yes I suppose I loved you in my youth as boys do love their mothers, so they say, but all that's gone from me this many a day: I am a merciless cactus an uncouth wild goat a jagged old...
The Church: Provisional but Necessary
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Turn once more our water into wine
No, no; religion is a spring, That from some secret, golden mine Derives her birth, and thence doth bring Cordials in every drop and wine; But in her long and hidden course Passing through the earth’s dark veins, Grows from better unto worse, And both her taste and...
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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Names of those who love the Lord: ‘Is mine one?’
Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!) Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, And saw, within the moonlight in his room, Making it rich and like a lily in bloom, An angel writing in a book of gold: Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold, And to the presence in...
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,...