Come and See: An Hour is Coming

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So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him,
so that you may marvel.  
For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life,
so also the Son gives life to whom he will.  
For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son,  that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.” 

“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.“

“Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. 

Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.“
John 5 19-29

When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by,
“Let us,” said he, “pour on him all we can.
Let the world’s riches, which dispersèd lie,
Contract into a span.”

So strength first made a way;
Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure.
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure,
Rest in the bottom lay.

“For if I should,” said he,
“Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts instead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature;
So both should losers be.

“Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness;
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to my breast.”
~George Herbert “The Pulley”

…with sighs soaring, soaring síghs deliver
Them; beauty-in-the-ghost, deliver it, early now, long before death
Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God,
beauty’s self and beauty’s giver.
See; not a hair is, not an eyelash, not the least lash lost; every hair
Is, hair of the head, numbered.
Nay, what we had lighthanded left in surly the mere mould
Will have waked and have waxed and have walked with the wind what while we slept,
This side, that side hurling a heavyheaded hundredfold
What while we, while we slumbered.
O then, weary then whý should we tread? why are we so haggard at the heart, so care-coiled, care-killed, so fagged, so fashed, so cogged, so cumbered…
~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “The Golden Echo”

An hour is coming, we don’t know when,
but He has told us to listen to His words and believe it will come.

We, weary and discouraged, are in need of rest.
He knows this about us.
He sees us so restless and pulls us into His arms.

Our resurrection is assured through Him.
We do not give up hope despite our weariness,
when life tosses up storms and troubles.

An hour is coming. It comes for us all.

I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…

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Bring to Light the Mystery: Look Right and Left

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I have no wit, no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numb’d too much for hopes or fears;
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimm’d with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the falling leaf:
O Jesus, quicken me.

My life is like a faded leaf,
My harvest dwindled to a husk:
Truly my life is void and brief
And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing,
No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall—the sap of Spring;
O Jesus, rise in me.
~Christina Rossetti from “A Better Resurrection”


<Peter> saw the linen cloths lying there, and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself. 
John 20: 6-7

It dawned on me that perhaps the first thing the risen Lord did after he defeated death, as his heart once again began to beat, was to fold his grave clothes.

This seemed to me to be good news for laundry doers everywhere—and especially to moms who probably still carry out the bulk of this mundane chore.

The risen Christ folded his laundry.

I suppose the angels could have done it but angels probably don’t have much experience with laundry.
~Doug Basler from “The Poetry of a Pastor” from Ekstasis Magazine

I remember, as a child, my panicky feeling, when my mother would help me take off a sweater with a particularly tight neck opening, as my head would get “stuck” momentarily until she could free me.

It caused an intense feeling of being unable to breathe or see anything around me – literally being frozen in place. I was trapped and held captive by something as innocuous as a piece of cloth, but the panic was real.

That same feeling still overwhelms me at times when I find myself stuck in my worries and fears, anxious and struggling to loosen what binds me, unable to look right or left, up or down.

My impulse, once free of whatever is smothering me, is to toss it as far away from me as possible. I want to be rid of it and never touch it again.

I certainly don’t take time to gently fold it up for all to see.

Jesus took the time to carefully fold His facial death cloth and leave it where anyone who entered the tomb would recognize it as proof that His body wasn’t stolen.

He had risen, leaving a clear message that all was in good order, as He said it would be.

Understanding that, I now find folding laundry more meaningful, not nearly as mundane. It is a reminder that a tidy and empty tomb is something to celebrate: new life quickens like spring sap rising from a fallen, faded leaf. 

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:

…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…

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Bring to Light the Mystery: The Otherness of Things

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I am struck by the otherness of things rather than their same-
ness. The way a tiny pile of snow perches in the crook of a
branch in the tall pine, away by itself, high enough not to be
noticed by people, out of reach of stray dogs. It leans against
the scaly pine bark, busy at some existence that does not
need me.

It is the differences of objects that I love, that lift me toward
the rest of the universe, that amaze me. That each thing on
earth has its own soul, its own life, that each tree, each clod is
filled with the mud of its own star. I watch where I step and see
that the fallen leaf, old broken grass, an icy stone are placed in
exactly the right spot on the earth, carefully, royalty in their
own country.
~Tom Hennen “Looking for the Differences” from Darkness Sticks to Everything. 

We dwell so much on our differences rather than our similarities, especially during intense political times.

There is nothing wrong with “otherness” if each “other” is seen as God sees us.

We each are one of His precious and specially-made creations, worthy of existence even in our muddy, rocky, fragile state.

These days, although a “snowflake” is disparaged in the political banter of the day as weak and overly sensitive, there is nothing more uniquely “other” than an individual crystalline creation falling from heaven to the exact spot where it is intended to land. Something so unique becomes part of something far greater than it could be on its own, blending in, infinitely stronger, but never lost.

I am placed here, weak as I am, in the exact right spot, for reasons I continue to uncover and discover. I try every day, as best as I can, to not get lost and, of course, to manage to stay out of the mud.

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:

…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…

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Bring to Light the Mystery: New Life Starts in the Dark

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Oh let me fall as grain to the good earth
And die away from all dry separation,
Die to my sole self, and find new birth
Within that very death, a dark fruition,
Deep in this crowded underground, to learn
The earthy otherness of every other,
To know that nothing is achieved alone
But only where these other fallen gather.

If I bear fruit and break through to bright air,
Then fall upon me with your freeing flail
To shuck this husk and leave me sheer and clear
As heaven-handled Hopkins, that my fall
May be more fruitful and my autumn still
A golden evening where your barns are full.
~Malcolm Guite “Unless a Grain of Wheat Falls Into the Ground and Dies”

…new life starts in the dark.
Whether it is a seed in the ground,
a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb,
it starts in the dark.
~Barbara Brown Taylor from Learning to Walk in the Dark

The ground is slowly coming to life again;
snowdrops, crocus, and daffodils are surfacing
from months of dormancy,
buds are swelling,
the spring chorus frogs have come from the mud to sing again
and birds now greet the lazy dawn.

The seed shakes off the darkness surrounding it.
Growth begins.

I too began a mere seed, plain and simple, lying dormant
in the darkness of my mother’s body.

Just as the spring murmurs life to the seed in the ground,
so the Word calls a human seed of life to stir and swell,
becoming both an animate and intimate reflection of Himself.

I was awakened in the dark to sprout, bloom and fruit, 
to reach as far as my tethered roots allow,
aiming beyond earthly bounds to touch the light.

Everything, everyone, so hidden;
His touch calls us back to life.
Love is come again
to the fallow fields of our hearts.

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:

…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…

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Bring to Light the Mystery: A Good Cleansing

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Wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin.
For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.
Psalm 51:2-3

Sometimes I wish I could be drenched thoroughly when I’ve gotten myself completely covered with muck–muddy hands, dirty feet, smudged face, soiled soul. It takes work, but I can remove all the signs of griminess on the surface.

Yet when I look in the mirror, I can see everything that desperately needs spiritual soap–now.  It is under the surface, harder to reach with soap, so I act helpless to do anything about it.
Maybe tomorrow…

People can be pretty effective at hiding the problems in their lives, even from themselves. However, in the clinical work I did for decades, it wasn’t always so easy to conceal. 

Patients came to inpatient detox because they had hit bottom in every way, so they are forced to confront the troubles that brought them there. I cared for people who had sold themselves, sold others, abandoned spouses as well as their own children, murdered others and tried to murder themselves. They come in so grimy, it is hard to even see their skin. They cry out for cleansing, for forgiveness, for healing. 

Sometimes they willingly submit to that wash cycle, yet sometimes the scrubbing that is the detox process is just too physically hard and painful despite all my efforts to ease it. They can’t handle it and leave before they are truly clean.
Maybe tomorrow.

I grieved for them when that happened.

Not once must I forget that their sin, ever so much more obvious,  is no greater than mine–we are all tainted goods. Our only hope is the Lord holding onto us tightly over holy waters to make sure we’re scrubbed until we shine: a true cleansing baptism.

Not tomorrow.

Today.

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:

…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…

Lyrics by David Wilton

Wash me clean
In the warm sun dry me
Cleanse my heart
From all iniquity
Baptize me
In the Holy Spirit sea
Renew my mind
That wickedness may flee

Barren fields will sprout trees
Deaf and blind will hear and see
Dead will raise and begin to breathe

Restore my soul
Holy Spirit take hold
Bathe me in
Your peace and let it flow
Grant me hope
In the dark have Your light shown
Sing Your love
The sweetest song I’ve ever known

Earth groans in pain to see
Sons of God declare to be
The full and glorious family

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Bring to Light the Mystery: The Open Wounds

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Your cold mornings are filled
with the heartache about the fact that although
we are not at ease in this world, it is all we have,
that it is ours but that it is full of strife,
so that all we can call our own is strife;
but even that is better than nothing at all, isn’t it?

…rejoice that your uncertainty is God’s will
and His grace toward you and that that is beautiful,
and part of a greater certainty…

…be comforted in the fact that the ache in your heart
and the confusion in your soul means that you are still alive,
still human, and still open to the beauty of the world,
even though you have done nothing to deserve it.
~Paul Harding in Tinkers

I think there is no suffering greater than
what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe. 
I know what torment this is, but I can only see it, 
in myself anyway, as the process by which faith is deepened. 
What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. 
They think faith is a big electric blanket, 
when of course it is the cross. 
It is much harder to believe than not to believe. 
If you feel you can’t believe, you must at least do this: 
keep an open mind. 
Keep it open toward faith, 
keep wanting it, 
keep asking for it, 
and leave the rest to God.
~Flannery O’Connor from The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor

Nothing that comes from God, even the greatest miracle, can be proven like 2 x 2 = 4. It touches one; it is only seen and grasped when the heart is open and the spirit purged of self. Then it awakens faith.  … the heart is not overcome by faith, there is no force or violence there, compelling belief by rigid certitudes.  What comes from God touches gently, comes quietly; does not disturb freedom; leads to quiet, profound, peaceful resolve within the heart.
~Romano Guardini from The Living God

On my doubting days,
days often full of uncertainty,
I recall how the risen Christ
invited Thomas to place his hand in His wounds,
gently guiding him to His reality,
so it became Thomas’s new reality.

Thomas then understood:
this God’s open wounds
were calling out
for belief.

Christ’s flesh and blood
awakens our fragile faith
by a simple touch.

…he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
John 20: 27-28

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:

…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…

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Bring to Light the Mystery: That Patch of Sunlight

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It appears now that there is only one
age and it knows
nothing of age as the flying birds know
nothing of the air they are flying through
or of the day that bears them up
through themselves
and I am a child before there are words
arms are holding me up in a shadow
voices murmur in a shadow
as I watch one patch of sunlight moving
across the green carpet
in a building
gone long ago and all the voices
silent and each word they said in that time
silent now
while I go on seeing that patch of sunlight
~W.S. Merwin, “Still Morning” from The Shadow of Sirius

photo by Barbara Hoelle

Our memories can play tricks.

Just a whiff of a fragrance can trigger an experience of another time and place, a song can transport us to a decade long ago, a momentary sensation will remind us of a past experience long forgotten.

We dwell inside a different age as the years go by, in a body that no longer looks or feels exactly the same, yet our memories take us powerfully back to a special moment that happened before.

For those who struggle with post-trauma recollections, this is a curse to be overcome. For those whose memories bring joy and comfort, they seek to nurture and cherish what has been as if it is still here and now.

Let us remember the Light, just as the poet W.S. Merwin in this poem “Still Morning” remembers the moment of his baptism in a church long gone and whose voices are long since stilled. The Light of that day remains, as fresh today as it was when it moved toward him.

Our memories aren’t tricks, and neither is the Light that shone on us. They sustain us in the here and now.

Our Savior: an ever-moving patch of Light in our lives –
forever radiant.

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:

…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…

TEXT
O nata lux de lumine,
Jesu redemptor saeculi,
Dignare clemens supplicum
Laudes precesque sumere.

Qui carne quondam contegi
Dignatus es pro perditis,
Nos membra confer effici
Tui beati corporis.

TRANSLATION
O Light born of Light,
Jesus, redeemer of the world,
Mercifully deign to accept
The praises and prayers of your suppliants.

O you who once deigned to be hidden in flesh
For the sake of the lost,
Grant us to be made members
Of your blessed body.

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Come and See: Do You Want to Get Well?

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Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”

“Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.”  At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.

The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.” But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ”

 So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?” The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.

Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.”  The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.

So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. In his defense Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

John 5: 1-18

I am overcome by ordinary contentment.
What hurt me so terribly all my life until this moment?
How I love the small, swiftly
beating heart of the bird singing in the great maples;
its bright, unequivocal eye.
~Jane Kenyon from “Having it out with Melancholy”

Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend 
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just. 
Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must 
Disappointment all I endeavour end? 

…birds build—but not I build; no, but strain, 
Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes. 
Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “Thou art indeed just, Lord”

It seems so obvious: someone lying on a mat near a healing pool for 38 years – an Old Testament reference to Israel’s wilderness journey and inability to enter the promised land – wants to get well.

Jesus knows this man’s heart is troubled.

Yet Jesus asks this paralyzed man whether he wants to be healed. Not if he is ready to be healed, but whether he wants to be well. It doesn’t seem like a hard question to answer, but at times in our own lives, we too may not feel ready for a transformation to wholeness?

Maybe we really aren’t sure what “well” and being healed will mean to our lives. We wander in the wilderness of weak, struggling bodies and minds, hoping and praying to be led into a promised land of no illness or limitations. But often we aren’t sure. We only know there are many compelling reasons – no help, no hope, isolation from family and friends – to explain why we are stuck where we are.

We can’t imagine it being any other way.

Some are born with disabilities determining what they can and can’t do, knowing no other existence than to be dependent on others for help and care. Others develop illness or experience injury that changes everything for them, creating overwhelming needs leading to profound discouragement.

Some try anything and everything, proven or unproven, to find relief from their symptoms, to find their way out of their wilderness — sometimes with lasting results, often with no improvement.

Jesus is asking this man and asking us: are you ready to live a full life that takes you beyond your current limits? If so, we are transformed from who we have been, to someone we and others may no longer recognize.

It is a scary prospect to pick up our mat, carry our own baggage and walk. But when Jesus enters our life and asks us, point blank, if we want to get well, to become whole, to leave our wilderness behind and join Him – we should not hesitate – wasting precious time explaining all the reasons it hasn’t worked so far.

Jesus is ready, willing and able. And we will be transformed.

…our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.
Romans 8:18

I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…

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Bring to Light the Mystery: It Could Be Otherwise

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I saw that a yellow crocus bud had pierced
a dead oak leaf, then opened wide. How strong
its appetite for the luxury of the sun!
~Jane Kenyon from Otherwise: New and Selected Poems

This is why I believe that God really has dived down into the bottom of creation, and has come up bringing the whole redeemed nature on His shoulders. The miracles that have already happened are, of course, as Scripture so often says, the first fruits of that cosmic summer which is presently coming on.

Christ has risen, and so we shall rise.

…To be sure, it feels wintry enough still: but often in the very early spring it feels like that. 

Because we know what is coming behind the crocus.

The spring comes slowly down the way, but the great thing is that the corner has been turned. There is, of course, this difference that in the natural spring the crocus cannot choose whether it will respond or not.

We can. 

We have the power either of withstanding the spring, and sinking back into the cosmic winter, or of going on…to which He is calling us.

It remains with us whether to follow or not, to die in this winter, or to go on into that spring and that summer.
~C. S. Lewis from “God in the Dock”

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.
~Jane Kenyon from “Otherwise”

A year ago today, I was shocked (thankfully, not literally!) to learn
my coronary arteries were significantly occluded with plaque,
despite years of daily barn chores, and blood pressure/lipid level management.

Stents were placed emergently to open the two critical blockages.
I began more powerful medications with a new awareness
as I go about the mundane routines of my day –
someday – maybe soon, perhaps a decade or more –
it would be otherwise.

I celebrate my year of opening my heart each day to the Son.

My appetite is strong for light and warmth,
to leave discouragement behind.
My desire is to delay death,
piercing through the decay
to flourish among the living,
to open wide my face
to the luxury of a luminous grace freely given.

A year ago today I turned a corner out of darkness,
being given more time to choose Light.
Grateful, I still follow the pathway of the Son.

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…
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Bring to Light the Mystery: Sustained Hour By Hour

barnstormingblog2 Comments

Days pass when I forget the mystery.
Problems insoluble and problems offering
their own ignored solutions
jostle for my attention…
            And then
once more the quiet mystery
is present to me, the throng’s clamor
recedes: the mystery
that there is anything, anything at all,
let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,
rather than void: and that, O Lord,
Creator, Hallowed one, You still,
hour by hour sustain it.
~Denise Levertov from “Primary Wonder” from Sands of the Well

Here is the mystery, the secret,
one might almost say the cunning,
of the deep love of God:
that it is bound to draw upon itself
the hatred and pain and shame
and anger and bitterness and rejection of the world,
but to draw all those things on to itself
is precisely the means chosen from all eternity
by the generous, loving God,
by which to rid his world of the evils
which have resulted from
human abuse of God-given freedom.
~N.T. Wright from The Crown and The Fire

Inundated by the inevitable bad news of the world,
I must cling to the mystery of His magnetism
for my own weaknesses, flaws and bitterness.

I am frozen in the ice of sin, waiting to be thawed.

He willingly pulls evil onto Himself, out of me.
Hatred and pain and shame and anger disappear
into the vortex of His love and beauty,
the mucky corners of my heart vacuumed spotless.

We are let in on a secret:
He is not sullied by absorbing the dirty messes of our lives.

Created in His image, sustained and loved,
thus a reflection of Him,
it is no mystery
we are washed forever clean.

photo of Mt. Baker reflected in Wiser Lake by Joel DeWaard

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:

…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…

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