Poems and readings to reflect on and shape your faith
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Our Father: Hallowed on Earth as in Heaven
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...
Waiting for Jesus
On the outskirts of Jerusalem the donkey waited. Not especially brave, or filled with understanding, he stood and waited. How horses, turned out into the meadow, leap with delight! How doves, released from their cages, clatter away, splashed with sunlight. But the...
Converted
'A wolf is not only turned into a sheep, but doth also take to himself a shepherd's nature. It is as if Christ should bring forth with his hand some angel sent from heaven.' John Calvin (1509-64), Commentary, (Acts 9:1-5).
Longing!
Under the dark trees, there he stands, there he stands; shall he not draw my eyes? I thought I knew a little how he compels, beyond all things, but now he stands there in the shadows. It will be Oh, such a daybreak, such bright morning, when I shall wake to see him as...
The Bible: Bestowed Word of God
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The rare herb of silence: and the Word comes
When the doors of the house are shut, Eyes lidded, mouth closed, nose and ears Doing their best to idle, fingers allowed out Only on parole; when the lovely holy distractions, Safe scaffolding of much loved formulae, Have been rubbed away; then the plant Begins to...
Jesus Christ: Crucified God in Person
I notice the sign and wonder why
Some of us run, some loiter; Some of us turn aside To erect the Calvary That is our signpost, arms Pointing in opposite directions To bring us in the end To the same place, so impossible Is it to escape love…. R.S. Thomas (1913-2000), Mass for Hard Times,...
My Jesus: God in man made visible
Earth cannot, with all its trinkets’ Slake my longings at this hour; They were captured, they were widened, When my Jesus showed his power. None but he can now content me, He, the Incomprehensible; O to gaze upon his Person, God in man made visible. Ann Griffiths...
I am 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 potsherd,...
Nuclear God?
It is not clear that he can't speak; who created languages but God? . . . We call him the dumb God with an effrontery beyond pardon. Whose silence so eloquent as his? What word so explosive as that one Palestinian word with the endlessness of its fall-out?...
Humankind: Sinful, Rebellious and Faithless
Human-kind
Know thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of Mankind is Man. Plac’d on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise, and rudely great: With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side, With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride, He hangs between; in...
A guilty conscience
Strange fondness of the human heart, Enamoured of its harm! Strange world, that costs it so much smart, And still has power to charm. Whence has the world her magic power? Why deem we Death a foe? Recoil from weary life’s best hour, And covet longer woe? The cause...
All you need is love
I found Him not in world or sun, Or eagle’s wing, or insect’s eye; Nor through the questions men may try, The pretty cobwebs we have spun…. Love is and was my Lord and King, And in his presence I attend To hear the tidings of my friend, Which every hour his...
A no-where Person
There is no-where in you, a paradise that is no-place and there you do not enter, except without a story. To enter there is to become unnameable. Whoever is there is homeless for he has no door, no identity with which to go out and to come in. Whoever is...
The Grace of God: Justifying and Converting
Prodigal Homecoming
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...
Come unto Me!
Christ leads me through no darker rooms Than he went through before. He that into his kingdom comes Must enter by that door. Come Lord when grace has made me meet Thy blessed face to see; For if thy work on earth be sweet, What will thy glory be? Then I shall end...
A debtor to mercy alone
A debtor to mercy alone, Of covenant mercy I sing; Nor fear with thy righteousness on My person and offering to bring. Augustus Montague Toplady (1740-78).
Emerging into the kingdom of heaven
This was the moment when Before turned to After And the future’s uninvented timekeepers presented arms. This was the moment when nothing happened. Only dull peace sprawled boringly over the earth. This was the moment when even energetic Romans Could find nothing...
Christ-likeness: Progressive Christian Living
Member of the fellowship of the unashamed
I’m part of the fellowship of the unashamed, I have stepped over the line. The decision has been made. I’m a disciple of Jesus Christ. I won’t look back, let up, slow down, back away, or be still. My past is redeemed, my present makes sense, My future is secure. I’m...
My conscience speaks
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...
Ignorant of themselves, of God much more
The worldly wisest Alas! What can they teach, and not mislead, Ignorant of themselves, of God much more, And how the world began, and how man fell, Degraded by himself, on grace depending? Much of the soul they talk, but all awry; And in themselves seek virtue; and to...
Lasting friendship
Such love I cannot analyse; It does not rest in lips or eyes, Neither in kisses nor caress. Partly, I know, it’s gentleness And understanding in one word Or in brief letters. It’s preserved By trust and by respect and awe, These are the words I’m feeling for....
Holy Spirit: in Christian Experience
Within myself I lose, or win
Not in the clamour of the crowded street, Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, But in ourselves are triumph and defeat. Henry W. Longfellow (1807-82).
In despair is the music still playing?
O God, can a man find you when he lies with his face downwards And his nose in the rubble that was his achievement? Is the music playing behind the door of despair? Patrick Kavanagh (1904-67).
God’s latecomers
‘Like me,’ she said to them, ‘you were late in coming. The shepherds were here long before; even the cattle. They had joined the chorus of angels before you were on your way….’ ‘How laboriously you came, taking sights and calculating, whereas the shepherds had run...
Open to surprise
Sometimes a light surprises The Christian while he sings; It is the Lord, who rises with healing in his wings; when comforts are declining, he grants the soul again a season of clear shining, to cheer it after rain. William Cowper...
Believers: Assured, Called and Prayerful
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...
Sing Without Need of Reply
Sing a new song to the Lord, sing through the skin of your teeth, sing in the code of your blood, sing with a throat full of earth, sing to the quick of your nails, sing from the knots of your lungs, sing like a dancer on coals, sing as a madman in tongues,...
Twisted Religion
I have pretended long, in loyalty. I had a childhood hurt for five harsh years, I let it wound my good fragility And over decades I've shed many tears And sometimes wished that I were wholly free Of faith because it was to me all fears, Unhappiness and, yes,...
Begin Again
Nor can you long be, what you now are, called fair, Do what you may do, what, do what you may, And wisdom is early to despair: Be beginning; since, no, nothing can be done To keep at bay Age and age's evils, hoar hair, Ruck and wrinkle, drooping, dying, death's worst,...
The Church: Provisional but Necessary
Have I forgotten the church somewhere?
Sometimes a man rises from the supper table and goes outside. And he keeps on going because somewhere to the east there’s a church. His children bless his name as if he were dead. Another man stays at home until he dies, stays with plates and glasses. So, then...
What life have you
What life have you if you have not life together? There is no life that is not in community, And not community not lived in praise of God. Even the anchorite who meditates alone, For whom the days and nights repeat the praise of God, Prays for the church, the body of...
My holy places
For the blood of thy martyrs and saints shall enrich the earth, shall create holy places. For wherever a saint has dwelt, wherever a martyr has given his blood for the blood of Christ, there is holy ground, and the sanctity shall not depart from it though armies...
Religion is over
The last quarter of the moon of Jesus gives way to the dark... Religion is over and what will emerge from the body of the new moon, no one can say. But a voice sounds in my ear: Why so fast, mortal? These very seas are baptized. The parish has a saint's name...
The Mission of God
Save your journeying soul
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...
Busy Bees
Prophets of a future not our own! The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, It is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction Of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work....
A window through thy grace
LORD, how can man preach thy eternal word: He is a brittle crazy glass: Yet in thy temple thou dost him afford This glorious and transcendent place, To be a window, through thy grace. But when thou dost anneal in glass thy story, Making thy life to shine...
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...
Moral Justice: a Vision of God’s Kingdom
Riches are the Snare
Extol not riches then, the toil of fools, The wise man’s cumbrance, if not snare, more apt To slacken virtue and abate her edge Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise. John Milton (1608-74), Paradise Regained.
Ceasefire
We have built a house that is not for Time’s throwing. We have gained a peace unshaken by pain for ever. War knows no power. Safe shall be my going, Secretly armed against all death’s endeavour; Safe though all safety’s lost; safe where men fall; And if these poor...
Gaza
She was beautifully, delicately made, So small, so unafraid, Till the bomb came. Bombs are the same, Beautifully, delicately made. C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), Time and Tide, 6th June 1942.
Glory: Now and Then, Here and There
His birth and our death?
… Were we led all that way for birth or death? There was a birth, certainly, we had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, but had thought they were different; this birth was hard and bitter agony for us, like death, our death. We returned to our places,...
Undressed for a Deeper Life, my Love
Well may this body poorer, feebler grow! It is undressing for its last sweet bed; But why should the soul, which death shall never know, Authority, and power, and memory shed? It is that love with absolute faith would wed: God takes the inmost garments off his child...
Love’s fire thou art
Love’s fire thou art, however cold I be, Nor heaven have I, nor place to lay my head, Nor home, but thee. Christina Rossetti (1828-82).
Living for now, and then
Thy life is Gods, thy time to come is gone, And is his right. He is thy night at noon: he is at night Thy noon alone. The crop is his, for he has sown. And well it was for thee, when this befell, That God did make Thy business his, and in thy life partake: For...