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
We do not possess the land
How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. We do not own the freshness of the air or the sparkle of water. How can you buy them from us? Every part of the earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, clearing...
Just a Drip!
All the treasures under the sky are married in a drop of rain, which conceals the sun in its window, beds itself in the droughty earth, miracles its nature in conception and gives its mind to thoughts of life and birth. If I had such a considerate soul you would find...
Recovered Greenness
How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean Are thy returns! ev’n as the flowers of spring; To which, beside their own demean, The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring. Grief melts away Like snow in May, As if there were no such thing. Who would have thought my...
The Bible: Bestowed Word of God
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Jesus Christ: Crucified God in Person
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Jesus of the Scars
If we have never sought, we seek Thee now; Thine eyes burn through the dark, our only stars; We must have sight of thorn-pricks on Thy brow, We must have Thee, O Jesus of the Scars. The heavens frighten us; they are too calm; In all the universe we have no place....
Humankind: Sinful, Rebellious and Faithless
Power must subserve wisdom
Power and Wisdom But what is strength without a double share Of wisdom? Vast, unwieldy, burdensome, Proudly secure, yet liable to fall By weakest subtleties; not made to rule, But to subserve where wisdom bears command. John Milton (1608-74), Samson...
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...
The priceless pearl of wisdom
A life all turbulence and noise may seem To him that leads it wise and to be praised, But wisdom is a pearl with most success Sought in still waters. William Cowper (1731 – 1800), The Task, Book III.
I am a stately palace
My God, I heard this day, That none doth build a stately habitation, But he that means to dwell therein. What house more stately hath there been, Or can be, then is Man? To whose creation All things are in decay. For man is ev’ry thing, And more…. Since then, my...
The Grace of God: Justifying and Converting
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Affluence or temperance
Imposter! Do not charge most innocent Nature, As if she would her children should be riotous With her abundance. She, good cateress, Means her provision only to the good, That live according to her sober laws, And holy dictate of spare Temperance. If every just man...
Christ-likeness: Progressive Christian Living
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Faces of sunflowers follow the sun
Come with me into the field of sunflowers. Their faces are burnished disks, their dry spines creak like ship masts, their green leaves, So heavy and many, fill all the day with the sticky sugars of the sun. Come with me to visit the...
Holy Spirit: in Christian Experience
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In the beginning was the word
We shall not cease from exploration, And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started, And know the place for the first time. T.S. Eliot (1888-1965).
Believers: Assured, Called and Prayerful
Listening at night
There are nights that are so still That I can hear the small owl calling Far off, and a fox barking miles away. It is then that I lie in the lean hours awake, listening to the swell born somewhere in the Atlantic, rising and falling, rising and falling, wave on wave...
Approaches of God
The waves run up the shore and fall back. I run up the approaches of God and fall back. The breakers return reaching a little further, gnawing away at the main land. They have done this thousands of years, exposing little by little the rock under the soil’s face. I...
I am ready to go
I leave aside my shoes, my ambitions undo my watch, my timetable take off my glasses, my views unclip my pen, my work put down my keys, my security to be alone with you, the only true God. After being with you I take up my shoes, to walk in your ways strap...
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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To see God only, I go out of sight
Seal then this bill of my divorce to all On whom those fainter beams of love did fall; Marry those loves which in youth scattered be On Fame, Wit, Hopes (false mistresses), to thee. Churches are best for prayer, that have least light: To see God only, I go out of...
The Mission of God
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Not my feet, Lord
Swift, tired, true, headstrong, tender, merciless – your feet have more persona than your head: born for earth that you may be freed for sky – Does anything that serves you serve like this? So why should someone say, ‘Not my feet, Lord – far rather wash my hands or...
Moral Justice: a Vision of God’s Kingdom
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We share our wound
Less passionate, the long war throws Its burning thorn about all men, Caught in one grief, we share one wound, And cry one dialect of pain. We have forgot who fired the house, Whose easy mischief spilt first blood; Under one roof we lie; The fault no longer...
Glory: Now and Then, Here and There
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Timeless serenity
God grant me the serenity, To accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking, as...