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

Jeu d’esprit

Flame-dancing Spirit, come, Sweep us off our feet and Dance us through our days. Surprise us with your rhythms, Dare us to try new steps, explore New patterns and new partnerships. Release us from old routines, To swing in abandoned joy And fearful adventure. And in...

Elections

Their threats are terrible enough, but we could bear All that; it is their promises that bring despair. If beauty, that anomaly, is left us still, The cause les in their poverty, not in their will. If they had power ('amenities are bunk'), conceive How their insatiate...

Hardy and Harry’s Seasons

This is the weather the cuckoo likes, and so do I When showers betumble the chestnut spikes and nestlings fly And the little brown nightingale bills his best, And they sit outside at the Traveller's Rest, And maids come forth sprig-muslin dressed, And citizens dream...

Wrack of mortal things!

Man at the best a creature frail and vain, In knowledge ignorant, in strength but weak, Subject to sorrows, losses, sickness, pain, Each storm his state, his mind, his body break, From some of these he never finds cessation, But day or night, within, without,...

Quiet Revival?

I walked abroad in Easter Park, I heard the wild dog’s distant bark, I knew my Lord was risen again,- Wild dog, wild dog, you bark in vain. Stevie Smith (1902-71), Conviction (11),1978.

George MacDonald (1824-1905) – Faith Shaper

George Macdonald was born in Huntly, in the western part of Aberdeenshire, Scotland, the son of a farmer and his wife Helen MacKay (1790-1832). He was educated in country schools where Gaelic myths and Old Testament stories were common currency. At King’s College,...

Emily Dickinson (1830-86) – Faith Shaper

Emily Dickinson’s father was a leading local lawyer and treasurer of the well-known Amherst College, founded in 1821. From 1840 she was educated at the Academy and then for a year at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. At the age of 23 she withdrew from most social...

John Milton (1608-74) – Faith Shaper

John Milton rejected the faith of his Roman Catholic father. He became a strongly Protestant Puritan, and a radical Christian with regard to the contemporary culture and powers in the land, including the Crown, Parliament and the Church. Although in 1630, he...

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) – Faith Shaper

Mary Oliver was born and raised in Maple Hills Heights, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. Abused as a child by her father and neglected by her mother, she commented ‘I was very little. But I had recurring nightmares; there’s damage.’[1] She described the setting: ‘It was...

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

No Results Found

The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.

On the sixth day we came

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...

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.

No Results Found

The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.

Jesus Christ: Crucified God in Person

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.

Humankind: Sinful, Rebellious and Faithless

No Results Found

The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.

Bondage more than liberty?

Bondage more than liberty?

But what more oft in nations grown corrupt, And by their vices brought to servitude, Than to love bondage more than liberty, Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty, And to despise, or envy, or suspect, Whom God hath of his special favour raised As their deliverer;...

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.

No Results Found

The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.

Christ-likeness: Progressive Christian Living

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.

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.

No Results Found

The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.

Believers: Assured, Called and Prayerful

No Results Found

The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.

Let me guard the holy fire

Let me guard the holy fire

O thou, who camest from above The pure celestial fire to impart, Kindle a flame of sacred love On the mean altar of my heart.   There let it for thy glory burn With inextinguishable blaze, And trembling to its source return In humble prayer and fervent praise.  ...

The Church: Provisional but Necessary

No Results Found

The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.

In the sacred store the music died

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...

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.

No Results Found

The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.

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.

No Results Found

The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.

Glory: Now and Then, Here and There

No Results Found

The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.

Dangerous day dreaming

Dangerous day dreaming

All men dream but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds awake to find that it is vanity; But the dreamers of the day are dangerous men for they may act with open eyes to make it possible.   T.E. Lawrence (1888 –...