Poems and readings to reflect on and shape your faith
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Our Father: Hallowed on Earth as in Heaven
What Now?
Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze...
Tomorrow Morning
Here dies another day, During which I have had eyes, ears, hands And the great world around me; And with tomorrow begins another. Why am I allowed two? G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936).
Thank you, Lord
… if all the world Should in a pet of temperance feed on pulse, Drink the clear stream and nothing wear but freize, The all-giver would be unthanked, would be unpraised, Not half his riches known, and yet despised; And we should serve him as a grudging master, As a...
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
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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...
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,...
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
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...
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...
Fulfilled
Human persons in every age, always and everywhere, whether they realise and reflect upon it or not, are in relationship with the unutterable mystery of human life that we call God. Looking at Jesus Christ the crucified and risen one, we can have the hope that now in...
Holy Spirit: in Christian Experience
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...
Time passes, waiting
… Young I pronounced you. Older I still do, but seldomer now, leaning far out over an immense depth, letting your name go and waiting, somewhere between faith and doubt for the echoes of its arrival. R.S. Thomas (1913-2000), Frequencies,...
Unless I catch fire
Unless the eye catch fire The God will not be seen. Unless the ear catch fire The God will not be heard. Unless the tongue catch fire The God will not be named Unless the heart catch fire The God will not be...
Believers: Assured, Called and Prayerful
Autumn Leavings
And if, as autumn deepens and darkens I feel the pain of falling leaves, and stems that break in storms and trouble and dissolution and distress and then the softness of deep shadows folding, folding around my soul and spirit, around my lips so sweet, like a swoon, or...
First Love
You have broken my heart. I cannot stop thinking about you. I love you even though I have met you only once. Others may have given up on you not realizing your potential but I see something in you. You made me cry but you have helped me to realize what is important in...
A flash of rare delight
Though I believe the resurrection truth, that good triumphant in the end is known. Yet all of life seems twisted so by grief that joy and sorrow have together grown. So to endure is all that I can give. Enjoyment is a flash of rare delight. While only Christ...
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
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...
Churchgoing
A serious house on serious earth it is, In whose blent air all our compulsions meet, Are recognised, and robed as destinies. And that much can never be obsolete Since someone will forever be surprising A hunger in himself to be more serious, And gravitate with it to...
The way into church!
I see a door, a multitude near by, In creed and quarrel, sure disciples all! Gladly they would, they say, enter the hall, But cannot, the stone threshold is so high.... But see, one comes; he listens to the voice; Careful he wipes his weary dusty feet! The...
The Mission of God
Buy me a home in a perfect hell
I would buy me a perfect island home, Sweet set in a southern sea, And there I would build me a paradise For the heart o’ my Love and me. I would plant me a perfect garden there, The one that my dream soul knows, And the years would flow as the petals grow, That...
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....
God’s secretary
of all the creatures both in sea and land Only to man hast thou made known thy ways, And put the pen alone into his hand, And made him secretary of thy praise. Beasts fain would sing; birds dittie to their notes; Trees would be tuning on their native lute To...
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
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...
Build your ship of death
Have you built your ship of death? O, have you? O, build your ship of death, for you will need it. D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930).
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,...
Together truth and beauty are one
I died for beauty, but was scarce Adjusted in the tomb, When one who died for truth was lain In an adjoining room. He questioned softly why I failed? ‘For beauty,’ I replied. ‘And I for truth, - the two are one; We brethren are,’ he said. And so, as...