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
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Our Father: Hallowed on Earth as in Heaven
Thy soul and God stand sure
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure; What entered into thee, That was, is, and shall be: Time’s wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure Robert Browning (1812-89).
The newspaper
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, Pit to Priest, Hucknall, May 2007.
A billboard lovely as a tree?
I think that I shall never see A billboard lovely as a tree. Perhaps unless the billboards fall, I’ll never see a tree at all. Ogden Nash (1902 – 71), Song of the Open Road, 1933.
‘His Eye to Watch’
I bind unto myself today The power of God to hold and lead, His eye to watch, his might to stay, His ear to hearken to my need, The wisdom of my God to teach, His hand to guide, his shield to ward, The word of God to give me speech, His heavenly host to by my guard....
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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Born to make us wild
A child is born, they cry, a child And he is Noble and not Mild (It is this child that makes them wild)… All noble mild children are brought home To the wicked king who has cast them down And ground their bones on the heavy stone. But the child that is Noble and...
Humankind: Sinful, Rebellious and Faithless
Our life’s star
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of...
‘I exist.’ Why?
A man said to the universe: ‘Sir, I exist.’ ‘However,’ replied the universe. ‘The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation.' Stephen Crane (1871-1900), War is Kind and Other Lines, 1899.
The end of our exploring
What we call the beginning is often the end And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from…. … A people without history Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails On a winter’s...
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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Christ died for God and me
Christ died for God and me Upon the crucifixion tree For God a spoken Word For me a Sword For God a hymn of praise For me eternal days For God an explanation For me salvation. Stevie Smith (1902-71), 1978.
Christ-likeness: Progressive Christian Living
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Put out to sea
When your ship Long moored in the harbour, Gives you the illusion Of being a house; When your ship Begins to put down roots In the stagnant water by the quay: Put out to sea! Save your boat’s journeying soul, And your own pilgrim soul, Cost what it may. Dom...
Holy Spirit: in Christian Experience
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My name is ‘I am’ not ‘I was’
I was regretting the past However dark it be; And fearing the future. Suddenly my lord was speaking; ‘My name is I am.’ He paused. I waited. He continued’ ‘When you live in the past, with its mistakes and regrets, it is hard. I am not there. My name is not ‘I was’....
Believers: Assured, Called and Prayerful
Search my sense and know my heart
Search me O God, my actions try, And let my life appear As seen by thine all-searching eye; To mine my ways make clear. Search all my sense and know my heart, Who only canst make known, And let the deep, the hidden part, To me be fully shown. Throw light into the...
I have only today
An hour which passes by; My life is a moment Which I have no power to stay. You know, O God, That to love you here on earth – I have only today. Therese of Lisieux (1873-97).
New every morning
New every morning is the love Our wakening and uprising prove; Through sleep and darkness safely brought, Restored to life and power and thought. John Keble (1792-1866) 1822.
Success
I’m Whatever is foreseen in joy Must be lived out from day to day. Vision held open in the dark By our ten thousand days of work. Harvest will fill the barn; for that The hand must ache, the face must sweat. And yet no leaf or grain is filled By work of ours; the...
The Church: Provisional but Necessary
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A frightful reformation lies ahead
Certainly things will be reformed; it will be a frightful reformation compared with which the Lutheran reformation will be almost a joke, a frightful reformation that will have as its battle-cry; ‘Whether will faith be found upon earth?’ and it will be...
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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God Bothering
If you were content, Lord, You would not bother with us. But you are restless: Through anger, through excitement, and through love, You will all things to change and be made new. So we praise you That your restlessness has been born in us: As the pain of the world The...
Glory: Now and Then, Here and There
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...
Quicken my dull-drooping spirit: grant it a crown
How do I spin my time away In caring how to get Ungodly wealth, and fret My self to sweat, As if thou, Lord, hadst meant this clay No after life, no reckoning day…. Quicken my dull-drooping spirit That it may praise thy name, Cleanse it from sin and blame, Take from...
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,...