Category: church

Something the World Should Know

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There we shall rest and we shall see;
we shall see and we shall love;
we shall love and we shall praise.
Behold what shall be in the end and shall not end.
~St. Augustine: ‘The City of God,’ Bk. XXII, Chap. 30.

The cows know. Standing still
in the pasture, chewing cud
and steadily swishing flies.
With those enormous eyes,
they look for all the world
as if they know.

The wind knows.
It whispers to the grass.
The grass tells the trees
who pass it on to the birds.
The crickets discover it
all on their own.

But you and I, we don’t.
Though on a day like today
when the sun is bright
and the cattails let loose
a flurry of tiny parachutes,
we sense there’s something
the world knows.

The dogs would tell us
if only we would listen.
~Kendall Dunkelberg”They Know” from Tree Fall with Birdsong

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.

We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.
~Naomi Shihab Nye “Shoulder” from Red Suitcase

And just what is it that we should know?
What are we missing that the cows, the wind, the trees, the grass, the birds, the crickets, the cattails, and certainly dogs know that we struggle to understand?

Simply this:
be content,
live aware of each moment as it comes,
be grateful for it and say so,
then have hope for the next moment, no matter how hard it may be.

Cherish whatever and whoever depends on us,
love them with all we’ve got.
Provide the shoulder that someone else needs.
Give ourselves away without expecting something in return.
Write it down so it is not lost.

We can see it deep in our dogs’ eyes. They know.

photo by Nate Gibson

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Come and See: Do You Want to Turn Back?

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But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, 

“Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” 

(For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.)  And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. 

So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?”  

Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”  

Jesus answered them, “Did I not choose you, the twelve? And yet one of you is a devil.”  He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was going to betray him.
John 6: 61-71

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”

Thou hast formed us for Thyself,
and our hearts are restless
till they find rest in Thee.
St. Augustine of Hippo in Confessions Book 1, Chapter 1

It is this great absence
that is like a presence, that compels
me to address it without hope
of a reply. It is a room I enter

from which someone has just
gone, the vestibule for the arrival
of one who has not yet come.

What resources have I
other than the emptiness without him of my whole
being, a vacuum he may not abhor?
~R.S. Thomas from “The Absence”

Why no! I never thought other than
That God is that great absence
In our lives, the empty silence
Within, the place where we go
Seeking, not in hope to
Arrive or find. He keeps the interstices
In our knowledge, the darkness
Between stars. His are the echoes
We follow, the footprints he has just
Left. We put our hands in
His side hoping to find
It warm. We look at people
And places as though he had looked
At them, too; but miss the reflection.
~R.S. Thomas “Via Negativa”

… to be consumed by God’s holy fire can be the best thing to ever happen to us. As one of my favorite authors Marilynne Robinson writes in her novel Gilead, “The idea of grace had been so much on my mind, grace as a sort of ecstatic fire that takes things down to essentials.”

To walk with Jesus is to leave some things behind, but I now know that the life he’s called me in to is one of beauty and grace, provision and purpose, relief and restoration — a life with all of the essentials.
~Grace Leuenberger from “Spiritual Formation Dropout” in Mockingbird

We are called to life in Him,
containing all the essentials,
even when we aren’t sure,
don’t know and don’t care.

He knows this about us;
He sees some turn back and walk away.

He knows they seek an easier life.
He knows how hard it is to follow Him.

He knows our restlessness;
He knows our impatience.

His footprints remain for us to find again.
The pulley that lets us go will draw us back to Him.

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.

Text from Christina Rossetti
None other Lamb, none other Name,
None other hope in Heav’n or earth or sea,
None other hiding place from guilt and shame,
None beside Thee!

My faith burns low, my hope burns low;
Only my heart’s desire cries out in me
By the deep thunder of its want and woe,
Cries out to Thee.

Lord, Thou art Life, though I be dead;
Love’s fire Thou art, however cold I be:
Nor Heav’n have I, nor place to lay my head,
Nor home, but Thee.

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The Last Sweet Bite

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Imagine you wake up
with a second chance:

How good to rise in sunlight,
in the prodigal smell of biscuits –
eggs and sausage on the grill.
The whole sky is yours

to write on, blown open
to a blank page. Come on,
shake a leg! You’ll never know
who’s down there, frying those eggs,
if you don’t get up and see.
~Rita Dover “Dawn Revisited” from On the Bus with Rosa Parks

Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast…”
John 21:12a

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.
~Joy Harjo “Perhaps the World Ends Here” from The Woman Who Fell From the Sky

Here we sit as evening falls
Like old horses in their stalls.
Thank you, Father, that you bless
Us with food and an address
And the comfort of your hand
In this great and blessed land.
Look around at each dear face,
Keep each one in your good grace.
We think of those who went before,
And wish we could have loved them more.
Grant to us a cheerful heart,
Knowing we must soon depart
To that far land to be with them.
And now let’s eat. Praise God. Amen.
~Gary Johnson “Table Grace”

Our life revolves around the table,
whether at home or at church.

This is where we hang out late into the evening,
and begin the day before dawn.

This is where prayer happens,
our meals eaten,
stories told,
arguments ensue and ease.

This is where we listen to, understand and love each other
through smiles and tears.

This is where we share what we have and eat and are fed and
this is where God provides for us daily.

We think of those who went before
and wish that we could have loved them more.

So let us love one another now, while we can, when we can,
and we shall feast together.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

Amen and Amen.

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Come and See: This is Hard…

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In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1: 1 and John 1: 14

When your words came, I ate them;
    they were my joy and my heart’s delight,
for I bear your name,
    Lord God Almighty.
Jeremiah 15:16

At this the Jews there began to grumble about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?”

“Stop grumbling among yourselves,” Jesus answered. “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day. It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me.  No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die.  I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”  He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?”
John 6:41-60

He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.
Deuteronomy 8:3

“ears of wheat” by Van Gogh – Van Gogh Museum

Where to get bread? An ever-pressing question
That trembles on the lips of anxious mothers,
Bread for their families, bread for all these others;
A whole world on the margin of exhaustion.
And where that hunger has been satisfied
Where to get bread? The question still returns
In our abundance something starves and yearns
We crave fulfillment, crave and are denied.

And then comes One who speaks into our needs
Who opens out the secret hopes we cherish
Whose presence calls our hidden hearts to flourish
Whose words unfold in us like living seeds
Come to me, broken, hungry, incomplete,
I Am the Bread of Life, break Me and eat.
~Malcolm Guite “I Am the Bread of Life”

Throughout his ministry, our Lord emphasized the idea of feeding as something intimately connected with his love and care for souls.

The mystery of the Eucharist does not stand alone. It is the crest of a great wave; a total sacramental disclosure of the dealings of the transcendent God with men. The hunger of the four thousand and five thousand are more than miracles of man is the matter of Christ’s first temptation. The feedings of practical compassion; we feel that in them something of deep significance is done, one of the mysteries of eternal life a little bit unveiled. So too in the supper at Emmaus, when the bread is broken the Holy One is known.

It is peculiar to Christianity, indeed part of the mystery of the Incarnation, that it constantly shows us this coming of God through and in homely and fugitive things and events; and puts the need and dependence of the creature at the very heart of prayer.
~Evelyn Underhill from “Abba”

Either secretly or sacramentally, all living Christians are perpetual penitents and perpetual communicants, there is no other way of carrying on.  The Eucharist represents a perpetual pouring out of his very life to feed and enhance our small and feeble lives. 
~Evelyn Underhill from “Light of Christ”

This is a hard teaching. No wonder the disciples were grumbling.
Who can accept Christ offering His own flesh and blood as a meal?

Yet we are well prepared for the feast of God’s Words in the Old Testament; nevertheless God’s people are unsatisfied, wanting more.

As the Word become flesh, Jesus reminds us that it is our joy and privilege to eat the Word of God, to absorb it completely, allowing it to fulfill and nourish us.

As His body on earth, the church joins together regularly to eat this mystical meal, nourished by Words that give us eternal life.

It isn’t just a hard teaching.
It is His incredible mysterious gift of Himself,
to feed our flesh and our spirits.

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.

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Quietly Write Something Down…

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At the gate, I sit in a row of blue seats
with the possible company of my death,
this sprawling miscellany of people—
carry-on bags and paperbacks—

that could be gathered in a flash
into a band of pilgrims on the last open road.
Not that I think
if our plane crumpled into a mountain

we would all ascend together,
holding hands like a ring of skydivers,
into a sudden gasp of brightness,
or that there would be some common place

for us to reunite to jubilize the moment,
some spaceless, pillarless Greece
where we could, at the count of three,
toss our ashes into the sunny air.

It’s just that the way that man has his briefcase
so carefully arranged,
the way that girl is cooling her tea,
and the flow of the comb that woman

passes through her daughter’s hair . . .
and when you consider the altitude,
the secret parts of the engines,
and all the hard water and the deep canyons below . . .

well, I just think it would be good if one of us
maybe stood up and said a few words,
or, so as not to involve the police,
at least quietly wrote something down.
~Billy Collins “Passengers”

Tell us of a bypassed heart beating in 12C,
how the woman holds a stranger’s hand
to the battery sewn in beneath her collarbone,
and says feel this. Tell us of the man’s ear
listening across the aisle, hugging itself,
a fist long since blistered by blaze.
Outside, morning sun buckling up.
Inside, twitching bonesacks of bat, birdsong
erupting as light cracks the far jungle canopy.
Ten thousand feet below ours, a grey cat
tongues the morning’s butter left out to soft.
Last night we broke open the sweet folds
around two paper fortunes. One said variety.
One said caution. The woman in 12C would hold that
her heart needs its hidden spark, but the man shows
how some live the rest of their lives with half a face
remembering its before expression. Who was it
that said our souls know one another
by smell, like horses?
~Jenny Browne “Love Letter to a Stranger”

These days, I spend as little time as possible in airports and airplanes among strangers. As an introvert who prefers to read quietly and stay securely in my shell, I politely converse with the people next to me but prefer a book and silence.

It is always a wonder to me when seat partners across from me or in front of me will spend the trip finding out all about each other’s lives, destinations and feelings about the state of the world. 

Even so, like Billy Collins in his poem, I’m struck by the affinity I feel for my fellow passengers as we embark on a trip by air – so different from each of us independently traveling down a highway in our individual vehicles.

In an airplane, our fates are lashed together. What happens to one will happen to all.

Because we are bound together – sometimes randomly, sometimes not – I do believe that we should try to find kindred and sympathetic souls in a mysterious way when we are thrust among strangers.

We are created for connection, whether by smell or sight or spirit.

And perhaps, scrolling through the internet, as we all do at times, you ran across this Barnstorming blog…not expecting a connection to happen.

And here we are –connected because I wrote something quietly down.
One never knows how we may become bound together.

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Come and See: Awake and Arise

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Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. 

But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. 

For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.  And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.  

For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.”
John 6: 35-40


Awake sad heart, whom sorrow ever drowns;
Take up thine eyes, which feed on earth;
Unfold thy forehead gather’d into frowns:
Thy Saviour comes, and with him mirth:
Awake, awake;
And with a thankfull heart his comforts take.
But thou dost still lament, and pine, and crie;
And feel his death, but not his victorie.

Arise sad heart; if thou dost not withstand,
Christs resurrection thine may be:
Do not by hanging down break from the hand,
Which as it riseth, raiseth thee:
Arise, Arise;
And with his buriall-linen drie thine eyes:
Christ left his grave-clothes, that we might, when grief
Draws tears, or blood, not want an handkerchief.
~George Herbert “The Dawning”

On my doubting days in this fraught world,
too frequent and discouraging,
I remember the risen Christ who awoke,
left behind His folded grave clothes,
so we could dry our tears of grief.

He reached out to place Thomas’s hand in His wounds,
gently guiding Thomas to His reality,
to become our new reality~
His open wounds called to Thomas’s mind and heart,
His flesh and blood
awakening a struggling faith
by a simple touch.

Leave it God to know how to dry our tears when we grieve.
Leave it to God to know how to raise the unreachable.

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.

Text by Mechthild of Magdeburg
Effortlessly,
Love flows from God into man,
Like a bird
Who rivers the air
Without moving her wings.
Thus we move in His world
One in body and soul,
Though outwardly separate in form.
As the Source strikes the note,
Humanity sings —
The Holy Spirit is our harpist,
And all strings
Which are touched in Love
Must sound.

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Challenging the Dull and the Dead

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…every year
the dull and dead in us
meets our Easter challenge:

to be open to the unexpected,
to believe beyond our security,
to welcome God in every form,
and trust in our own greening.
~Joyce Rupp from Out of the Ordinary: Prayers, Poems, and Reflections for Every Season

The challenge after each Easter
is to go back to my everyday routine
as if nothing momentous has happened
when, in fact, everything has happened.

There is laundry to do
floors to mop
groceries to buy
a barn to clean
taxes to pay.

Nothing seemingly has changed –
yet…
everything is changed.

Now I know why,
though dull and dead and pruned,
after each and every Sabbath, I sprout green ~
I am alive only
because He is.

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Come and See: The Seal of Approval

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When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?”

Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill.  Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”

Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”

Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”

So they asked him, “What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”

Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

“Sir,” they said, “always give us this bread.”
John 6: 22-34

The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them;
it was not in them, it only came through them,
and what came through them was longing.
These things — the beauty, the memory of our own past —
are good images of what we really desire;
but if they are mistaken for the thing itself
they turn into dumb idols,
breaking the hearts of their worshipers.
For they are not the thing itself;
they are only the scent of a flower we have not found,
the echo of a tune we have not heard,
news from a country we have never visited.
~C.S. Lewis from “Reflections”

At present we are on the outside of the world,
the wrong side of the door.
We discern the freshness and purity of morning,
but they do not make us fresh and pure.
We cannot mingle with the splendours we see.
But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling
with the rumour that it will not always be so.
Some day, God willing, we shall get in.
When human souls have become as perfect
in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is
in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its
or rather that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch.
~C.S. Lewis from The Weight of Glory

I know this hunger the disciples express…
Even when I am fully sated,
still I ask for more.

By loving and longing for more,
I am looking for what is always there,
but settle for a reflection
rather than the thing itself.
Lord, help me wait at your door.

The beauty of anticipation,
confident of fulfillment to come
my thirstiness
slaked
my hunger
satisfied.

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.

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Lit From Within

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For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
2 Corinthians 4:6

…there must take place that struggle
no human presumes to picture:
living, dying, descending to rescue the just
from shadow, were lesser travails
than this: to break
through earth and stone of the faithless world
back to the cold sepulchre, tearstained
stifling shroud; to break from them
back into breath and heartbeat, and walk
the world again, closed into days and weeks again,
wounds of His anguish open, and Spirit
streaming through every cell of flesh
so that if mortal sight could bear
to perceive it, it would be seen
His mortal flesh was lit from within, now,
and aching for home. He must return,
first, in Divine patience, and know
hunger again, and give
to humble friends the joy
of giving Him food—fish and a honeycomb.
~Denise Levertov from “Ikon: The Harrowing of Hell”

People are like stained-glass windows.  They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.
~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Christ forced open a door that has been locked since the death of the first man. He has met, fought and beaten the king of death. Everything is different because he has done so.
~C.S. Lewis from Miracles

In my clinical work over four decades, I met people living with dark times. It is rare for a patient to come to clinic because all is well. 

They come because they are beaten down, struggling to keep going, running out of fuel, hungry for calm as they are blown about by the storms of life.

It was my challenge to stoke and feed the inner light hidden deep within each person, fighting back the darkness as I sorted out how to mend their unwellness.

I’m reminded Christ came back from the harrowing darkness of hell to be joyfully met by His disciples, who fed His hunger. Then He cooked breakfast for them, forever offering Himself as sanctuary from the darkness He had known.

So too, we are fed, bathing in His glow.

Lyrics
Jesus Christ, inner light,
let not our own darkness conquer us.
Jesus Christ, inner light,
enable us to welcome your love.
Jesus Christ, in our search for you,
Bring us into the warmth of your light.
Jesus Christ, inner light,
enable us to welcome your love.

Lyrics:
Through love to light!
Oh, wonderful the way
That leads from darkness to the perfect day!
From darkness and from sorrow of the night
To morning that comes singing o’er the sea.
Through love to light!
Through light, O God, to thee,
Who art the love of love, the eternal light of light!

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A World So Broken: This Sacred Tension

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…by Easter Tuesday, we often find ourselves back in the shadows.

The cancer is still there. That financial struggle is not resolved. The depression returns. That relationship is still broken. We might ask, “If Christ is risen, why does the world still feel so broken?” This is not a lack of faith; it’s the honest lament of believers who are learning to walk in the tension of the now and the not yet. 

This sacred tension calls us to rejoice and weep on Easter Tuesday.

Rejoice that Jesus is risen. We have a living hope. We are promised an eternal inheritance, which is being kept for us by the one who purchased it with his own life. But embrace the grief too. Sadness is the healing emotion of the soul. Sorrow is a gift from God that allows our souls to breathe and cope in a world that aches, longing for restoration. 
~Brian Croft from “Embracing a Sacred Tension”

For you are not a God who delights in wickedness;
    evil may not dwell with you.
5 The boastful shall not stand before your eyes;
    you hate all evildoers.
6 You destroy those who speak lies;
    the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.
Psalm 5: 4-6

To invite Jesus to cleanse the temple of our hearts
is not to ask for guilt and shame.
It is to ask for healing.
The same Lord who overturned tables did so
not to destroy and humiliate,
but to reclaim and restore.
He interrupts only that which obstructs.
He removes only that which hinders life and worship.
His cleansing is never punitive; it is always redemptive.
~Scott Sauls from “What Would Jesus Overturn in Your Life?”

To live coram Deo is to live one’s entire life
in the presence of God,
under the authority of God,
to the glory of God. 

To live in the presence of God is to understand
that whatever we are doing and wherever we are doing it,
we are acting under the gaze of God.

There is no place so remote that we can escape His penetrating gaze.

To live all of life coram Deo is to live a life of integrity.
It is a life of wholeness that finds
its unity and coherency
in the majesty of God.

Our lives are to be living sacrifices,
oblations offered in a spirit of adoration and gratitude.

A fragmented life is a life of disintegration.
It is marked by inconsistency, disharmony, confusion,
conflict, contradiction, and chaos.

Coram Deo … before the face of God.
…a life that is open before God.
…a life in which all that is done is done as to the Lord.
…a life lived by principle, not expediency; by humility before God,
not defiance.
~R.C. Sproul from “What Does “coram Deo” mean?”

On this Easter Tuesday, we cannot escape His gaze…
all of us, all colors, shapes and size, even the leadership of our nation.
We are created in His image, imago dei, so He looks at us
as His reflections in the mirror of this troubled world.

What we do, how we speak and write, how we treat others –
reflects the face of God.

Jesus is the embodied temple who brought His sacrifice to the people,
rather than people coming to the temple with their sacrifices.

I cringe to think how hard we try to hide from His gaze.

Yet some don’t make a pretense of hiding – they make it quite public:
our elected leader chooses Easter to publish a vile message filled with profanity, name-calling and threats, then gives a fragmented and disintegrated Easter speech, to celebrating families with children, with
inconsistency, dishonesty, disharmony, confusion, conflict, contradiction, and chaos.

We drown together in the mud of our mutual guilt and lack of humility. All that we do to others, we do to God Himself.

We must be on our knees asking for cleansing,
for the temples of our hearts to be overturned,
our corruption scattered, our sorrows lifted.

Jesus comes to cleanse, repair, reclaim and restore –
His mission to save us from ourselves.

Kind of takes one’s breath away.

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