Poems and readings to reflect on and shape your faith
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USE FAITH SHAPERS FOR:
- Prayer or in time of personal need
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Latest Posts
Our Father: Hallowed on Earth as in Heaven
‘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....
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...
Enthral me
Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. I, like an usurped town to another due, Labour to admit you, but O, to...
Walk with God
The Lord of all, himself through all diffused, Sustains, and is the life of all that lives. Nature is but a name for an effect Whose cause is God. He feeds the secret fires By which the mighty process is maintained, Who sleeps not, is not weary; in whose sight Slow...
The Bible: Bestowed Word of God
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...
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...
God’s love-letter
A man who loves his wife will love her letters and her photographs because they speak to him of her. So if we love the Lord Jesus we shall love the Bible because it speaks to us of him. The husband is not so stupid as to prefer his wife's letters to her voice, her...
Jesus Christ: Crucified God in Person
He shall win all again
What hath man done that man shall not undo, Since God to him is grown so near akin? Did his foe slay him? He shall slay his foe. Hath he lost all? He all again shall win. Is sin his master? He shall master sin…. He is a path if any be misled; He is a robe, if any...
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...
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...
Palm Sunday
When fishes flew and forests walked And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood Then surely I was born. And monstrous head and sickening cry And ears like errant wings, And devil's walking parody On all four-footed things. The tattered...
Humankind: Sinful, Rebellious and Faithless
‘Foolish soul who sinned today’
Canst be idle? Canst thou play, Foolish soul who sinned today? Hast thou tears, or hast thou none? If poor soul, thou hast no tears, Would thou hadst no faults or fears! Who in heart not ever kneels, Neither sin nor Saviour feels. George Herbert...
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...
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...
Stop the Clocks
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone. Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He is...
The Grace of God: Justifying and Converting
Content with what I have
He that is down needs fear no fall, He that is low, no pride: He that is humble ever shall Have God to be his guide. I am content with what I have, Little be it or much: And, Lord, contentment still I crave; Because thou savest such. John Bunyan...
A stricken deer that left the herd
I was a stricken deer that left the herd, Long since with many an arrow deep infixed. My panting side was charged, when I withdrew To seek a tranquil death in distant shades. There was I found by One who had Himself Been hurt by the archers. In his side He bore, And...
Blind unbelief is sure to err
Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, But trust him for his grace; Behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face. His purposes will ripen fast, Unfolding every hour; The bud may have a bitter taste,...
Spring is Not our Mating Season
I will not kiss you, country fashion, By hedgesides where Weasel and hare Claim kinship with our passion.... This bare clay-pit is truest setting For love like ours: No bed of flowers But sand-ledge for our petting. The Spring is not our mating season:...
Christ-likeness: Progressive Christian Living
Where now?
My road calls me, lures me West, east, south and north; Most roads lead men homewards, My road leads me forth. To add more miles to the tally Of grey miles left behind, In quest of that one beauty God put me here to find. John Masefield...
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...
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...
Compassion
We in our prideful counting are answerable to you: Facing the cost of our pride, we choose you; We choose you and your compassion; We choose you, because we trust that, You do not deal with us according to our sins, Nor repay us according to our iniquities. So we...
Holy Spirit: in Christian Experience
I will live as I will
Lord, let me live as I will. I need a little wild freedom, A little giddiness of heart, the strange taste of unknown flowers… I love to bound to the heart of all thy marvels, Leaping your chasms and My mouth stuffed with intoxicating grasses; Quiver with an...
Setting out on an adventure
I sense the excitement in his mind: The prodigal taking all that he had And moving out, a feeling of freedom in the air, Stretching the strings that held him back, Rejecting home Familiar, undervalued, And stepping out into the world…. Yet every new excitement...
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...
God’s fantastic move
Tripping over Joy What is the difference Between your experience of Existence And that of a saint? The saint knows that the spiritual path Is a sublime chess game with God And that the Beloved Has just a Fantastic Move That the saint is now continually Tripping...
Believers: Assured, Called and Prayerful
No Turning Back
I have decided to follow Jesus. Though I wander, I still will follow ; The world behind me, The Cross before me. Though none go with me, Still will I follow. Will you decide now To follow Jesus? No turning back; No turning back. Sundar Singh (Sadhu),...
Silent Disapproval
The relation between us was silence; that and the feeling of each one being watched by the other... It had begun by my talking all of the time repeating the worn formulae of the churches in the belief that was prayer. Why does silence suggest disapproval? The...
Search Me O God
Search me, O God, and know my heart today Try me, O Lord, and know my thoughts, I pray See if there be some wicked way in me Cleanse me from every sin and set me free. I praise you Lord, for cleansing me from sin Fulfil your word, and make me pure within Fill...
My Signal Box
The signal box sometimes feels like one of those invitation tests: go to the wilds, endure the emptiness of yourself and return reformed. Confront that which is most you: stray to the dark realm of your bruised heart and let the light in, let the grand voice of...
The Church: Provisional but Necessary
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...
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...
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...
Love You to Death
I am beginning to understand I saw a sign once; outside a church. It said Are you really living or just walking around to save the expense of a funeral? I didn’t know that Love is real life, and everything else is just a more or less entertaining way of dying, and I...
The Mission of God
Support where it is needed
Fount of mercy, Call back the one who flees from you. Draw towards you the one who attempts to escape. Lift up the one who has fallen. Support the one who is standing. Guide the one who is on a journey. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), Opera Omnia.
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...
Harvest: theirs and ours
We dare not ask you bless our harvest feast Till it is spread for poorest and for least. We dare not bring our harvest gifts to you Unless our hungry brothers share them too. Not only at this time, Lord; every day Those whom you love are dying...
Holy Island – What Me?
Leave me alone with God as much as may be, as the tide draws the waters close in upon the shore, make me an island, set apart, alone with You, God, holy to You. Then, with the turning of the tide, prepare me to carry your presence to the busy world, beyond...
Moral Justice: a Vision of God’s Kingdom
Newspapers?
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 (1937- ), Pit to Priest, 2007.
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...
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’...
The writing on the wall
Silence like a cancer grows And the people bowed and prayed To the neon god they made. And the sign flashed out its warning, In the words that it was forming, And the signs said, ‘The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls And tenement halls, And...
Glory: Now and Then, Here and There
Unbelieving Saturday
A solemn, sombre, leaden Saturday – the muscles and joints of the day lie slack. Silence entombed in stillness – dread Sabbath. Who can be a believer on this day? I’ve come so far to shed tears here at last in the city of my heart. No one stirs. Faith creeps...
Uninhabited Cross
Not the empty tomb but the uninhabited cross. Look long enough and you will see the arms put on leaves. Not a crown of thorns but a crown of flowers haloing it, with a bird singing as though perched on paradise’s threshold. R.S. Thomas (1913-2000),...
No cross; no crown
No pain; no palm. No thorns; no throne. No gall; no glory. No cross; no crown. William Penn (1644-1718).
Deathbed
Now, when the frail and fine-spun Web of mortality Gapes, and lets slip What we have loved so long From out our lighted present Into the trackless dark We turn, blinded, Not to the Christ in Glory, Stars about his feet, But to the Son of Man, Back from the tomb, Who...