Category: church

Come and See: Unbind Him and Let Him Go

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Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. 

Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” 

Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.” 

Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone.

And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.” 

When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.” 

The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth.

Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
John 11:38-44

The man was wholly raised, but not wholly freed.
See, here is a living man in the garments of death!
That napkin and other grave-clothes were
altogether congruous with death,
but they were much out of place
when Lazarus began again to live.
It is a wretched sight to see a living man wearing his shroud.

If the Lord Jesus Christ employed the disciples
in relieving Lazarus of his grave-clothes,
do you not think he would employ us
if we were ready for such work? 
Innumerable are the instances of souls
blessed by human instrumentality…
~Charles Spurgeon from “Unbinding Lazarus”

When the Lord speaks,
it will usually produce something that needs to be unwrapped.
God’s words are powerful. They create, heal, and restore.
They change things in both the visible and invisible realms.

…as we become committed to the discipline of unwrapping,
like the bystanders Jesus invited into Lazarus’ miracle story,
we’ll be better positioned to participate
in the wondrous things Jesus is always doing in the lives of others
and the world around us.
~Randy Boldt from “The Discipline of Unwrapping”

After one moment when I bowed my head
And the whole world turned over and came upright,
And I came out where the old road shone white.
I walked the ways and heard what all men said,
Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed,
Being not unlovable but strange and light;
Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite
But softly, as men smile about the dead

The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.
~Gilbert Chesterton “The Convert”

Love, take my hand and lead me like the blind,
Unbandage me, unwrap me from my fear,
Open my eyes, my heart, my soul, my mind.
I struggle with these grave clothes, this dark earth,
But you are calling ‘Lazarus come forth!’
~Malcolm Guite from “He who has ears to hear let him hear’

The witnesses were marveling over the miracle of a living, breathing Lazarus, four days dead, stumbling out of the tomb, still wrapped in his graveclothes, in response to Jesus’ shout “Lazarus, come out.” 

The next command, spoken to those standing there with their mouths agape, was just as consequential: “Unbind him, and let him go.”

Jesus’ message was clear. This miracle doesn’t end with a stilled heart beating again. It is an ongoing resurrected transformation for the witnesses as well.

What the Lord raises up, the community must unwrap, helping Lazarus move back into life, with support.

We are surrounded every day by those who, like Lazarus, are metaphorically walking in their graveclothes, spiritually dead or dying. They may be a family member or neighbor, they may be living unhoused in the woods down the road, they may be lying overdosed in a city alley. When called back to life, their next step can’t happen until they are unbound from the death-wraps that smother and blind them.

The rest is up to us, their community.
Jesus, with only His words, gives new life to the dead.
Jesus, with only His words, commands us to make it possible for the living to thrive, unshackled from paralyzing sin, and freed to new life.

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.

Ways to Waste Wisely My Days

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This world, after all our science and sciences,
is still a miracle;
wonderful, inscrutable, magical, and more,
to whosoever will think of it.

To awaken each morning
with a smile brightening my face;
to greet the day with reverence
for the opportunities it contains;
to approach my work with a clean mind;
to hold ever before me,
even in the doing of little things,
the ultimate purpose toward which I am working;
to meet men and women
with laughter on my lips
and love in my heart;
to be gentle, kind, and courteous
through all the hours;
to approach the night
with weariness that ever woos sleep 
and the joy that comes from work well done – 
this is how I desire to waste wisely my days.
~Thomas Dekker, 16th century British playwright

I work hard at wasting my days wisely. 

Summers are a classic opportunity to waste time and I do
– happily –
yet there is always a hint of regret:
I could have made more of a dewy bright morning,
an afternoon of cooling shadows,
or a full-moon twilight.

Or perhaps I could have made this day better
for someone else to waste.

How better to waste my days:
to find ways for my interactions to be more joyous,
if only through a smile,
a shared chuckle,
a kind word,
a generous gesture.

Waste away, dear days. What a wonderful world this could be.

The world, after all, is a miracle and needs us to notice.

Ducks in a Muddy Pond

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Now Naaman was commander of the army of the king of Aram. He was a great man in the sight of his master and highly regarded, because through him the Lord had given victory to Aram. He was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy.

Naaman went with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha’s house. Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, “Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.”

But Naaman went away angry and said, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy.  Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?” So he turned and went off in a rage.

Naaman’s servants went to him and said, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!”  So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.
2Kings 5: 1, 9-14

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.
~John Bunyan from The Pilgrim’s Progress

Source: Pilgrim’s Progress,
duckchelan2

Perhaps it was his plain talk about the Word of God.
Perhaps it was his folksy stories tying that Word to our lives.
Perhaps it was because he was, like the rest of us,
so fully a flawed and forgiven human being.

Pastor Bruce Hemple ministered to thousands over his lifetime of service, yet the simple act of climbing the steps up to the pulpit at Wiser Lake Chapel was nearly impossible for him.

Bruce had one leg. The other was lost to an above the knee amputation due to severe diabetes. He wore an ill-fitting prosthetic leg that never allowed a normal stride and certainly proved a challenge when ascending stairs. He would come early to the sanctuary to climb the several steps to the chair behind the pulpit so he would not have to struggle in front of the congregation at the start of the service. As we would enter to find our pew seats, he would be deep in thought and prayer, already seated by the pulpit.

He often said he knew he was a difficult person to live with because of his constant pain and health problems. His family confirmed that was indeed true, but what crankiness he exhibited through much of the week evaporated once he was at the pulpit. Standing there balanced on his good leg with his prosthesis acting as a brace, he was transformed and blessed with clarity of thought and expression.

His pain was left behind.

He came to our church after many years of military chaplaincy, having served in Korea and Vietnam and a number of stateside assignments. He liked to say he “learned to meet people where they were” rather than where he thought they needed to be. His work brought him face to face with thousands of soldiers from diverse faiths and backgrounds, or in many cases, no faith at all, yet he ministered to each one in the way that was needed at that moment. He helped some as they lay dying and others who suffered so profoundly they wished they would die. He was there for them all and he was there for us.

One of his memorable sermons came from 2Kings 5:1-19 about the healing of the great and proud warrior Naaman who was afflicted with leprosy. Pastor Bruce clearly identified with Naaman and emphasized the message humility with obedience to God as the key to Naaman’s healing. Like Naaman, no one would desire “Seven Ducks in a Muddy Pond” but once Naaman was obedient despite his pride and doubts, he was cured of the incurable by bathing in the muddy Jordan River.

Even upon his retirement, Bruce continued to preach when churches needed a fill in pastor, and he took a part time job managing a community food and clothing bank, connecting with people who needed his words of encouragement. He was called regularly to officiate at weddings and funerals, especially for those without a church. He would oblige as his time and health allowed.

His last sermon was delivered on a freezing windy December day at a graveside service for a young suicide victim he had never known personally. Pastor Bruce was standing at the head of the casket and having concluded his message, he bowed his head to pray, continued to bend forward, appeared to embrace the casket and breathed his last.

He was gone, just like that.

He was not standing up high at the pulpit the day he died. He was obediently getting muddy in the muck and mess of life, and waiting, hoping, as we all are, for the moment he’d be washed clean.

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A Tumble of Onions

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How easily happiness begins by   
dicing onions. A lump of sweet butter   
slithers and swirls across the floor   
of the sauté pan, especially if its   
errant path crosses a tiny slick
of olive oil. Then a tumble of onions.

This could mean soup or risotto   
or chutney (from the Sanskrit
chatni, to lick). Slowly the onions   
go limp and then nacreous
and then what cookbooks call clear,   
though if they were eyes you could see

clearly the cataracts in them.
It’s true it can make you weep
to peel them, to unfurl and to tease   
from the taut ball first the brittle,   
caramel-colored and decrepit
papery outside layer, the least

recent the reticent onion
wrapped around its growing body,   
for there’s nothing to an onion
but skin, and it’s true you can go on   
weeping as you go on in, through   
the moist middle skins, the sweetest

and thickest, and you can go on   
in to the core, to the bud-like,   
acrid, fibrous skins densely   
clustered there, stalky and in-
complete, and these are the most   
pungent, like the nuggets of nightmare

and rage and murmury animal   
comfort that infant humans secrete.   
This is the best domestic perfume.   
You sit down to eat with a rumor
of onions still on your twice-washed   
hands and lift to your mouth a hint

of a story about loam and usual   
endurance. It’s there when you clean up   
and rinse the wine glasses and make   
a joke, and you leave the minutest   
whiff of it on the light switch,
later, when you climb the stairs.
~William Matthews “Onions”

I don’t mean to make you cry.
I mean nothing, but this has not kept you
From peeling away my body, layer by layer,

The tears clouding your eyes as the table fills
With husks, cut flesh, all the debris of pursuit.
Poor deluded human: you seek my heart.

Hunt all you want. Beneath each skin of mine
Lies another skin: I am pure onion–pure union
Of outside and in, surface and secret core.

Look at you, chopping and weeping…
~Suji Kwock Kim from “Monologue for a Onion”

…It’s true it can make you weep
to peel them, to unfurl and to tease   
from the taut ball first the brittle,   
caramel-colored and decrepit
papery outside layer, the least

recent the reticent onion
wrapped around its growing body,   
for there’s nothing to an onion
but skin, and it’s true you can go on   
weeping as you go on in, through   
the moist middle skins, the sweetest

and thickest, and you can go on   
in to the core, to the bud-like,   
acrid, fibrous skins densely   
clustered there, stalky and in-
complete, and these are the most   
pungent…
~William Matthews from “Onions”

…I would never scold the onion
for causing tears.
It is right that tears fall
for something small and forgotten.
How at meal, we sit to eat,
commenting on texture of meat or herbal aroma
but never on the translucence of onion,
now limp, now divided,
or its traditionally honorable career:
For the sake of others,
disappear.
~Naomi Shihab Nye from “The Traveling Onion”
from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems.

Onion,
luminous flask,
your beauty formed
petal by petal,
crystal scales expanded you
and in the secrecy of the dark earth
your belly grew round with dew.
Under the earth
the miracle
happened
and when your clumsy
green stem appeared,
and your leaves were born
like swords
in the garden,
the earth heaped up her power
showing your naked transparency…

…You make us cry without hurting us.
I have praised everything that exists,
but to me, onion, you are
more beautiful than a bird
of dazzling feathers,
heavenly globe, platinum goblet,
unmoving dance
of the snowy anemone

and the fragrance of the earth lives
in your crystalline nature.
~Pablo Neruda from “Ode to the Onion”

Everything smells of “eau de onion” here in the kitchen when the onions are brought in from our garden to be stored or dehydrated and frozen for winter soups and stews.

This is weepy business, but these are good tears like I spill over the whistled Greensleeves theme from the old “Lassie” TV show, or during any childrens’ choir song, or by simply watching videos of our grandchildren who live too far away to visit every day.

It takes almost nothing these days to make me weep, so onions are a handy excuse, allowing my tears to flow without explanation:

I weep over the headlines.

I weep over how messy things can get between people who don’t listen to one another or who misinterpret what they think they hear.

I weep knowing we all have layers and layers of skin that appear tough on the outside, but as you peel gently or even ruthlessly cut them away, the layers get more and more tender until you reach the throbbing heart of us.

We tend to hide our hearts out of fear of being hurt, crying out in pain.

Like an onion, each one of us exists to make the day a bit better, the meal more savory, to enhance the flavors of all who are mixed into this melting pot together, trying to make sad things new.

We aren’t meant to stand alone, but to disappear into the stew, and be sorely missed if we are absent.

So very dish needs an onion, and for the sake of the dish, every onion vanishes in the process.

No, I don’t mean to make you cry
as you peel my layers away,
gently, one by one,
each more tender until you reach my heart.
Chop away at me if you must
but weep the good tears, the ones that mean
we weep for the sake of our meal together:
you eating and drinking,
and me – consumed.

Lyrics:
When the dark wood fell before me
And all the paths were overgrown
When the priests of pride say there is no other way
I tilled the sorrows of stone

I did not believe because I could not see
Though you came to me in the night
When the dawn seemed forever lost
You showed me your love in the light of the stars

Chorus:
Cast your eyes on the ocean
Cast your soul to the sea
When the dark night seems endless
Please remember me

Then the mountain rose before me
By the deep well of desire
From the fountain of forgiveness
Beyond the ice and fire

Though we share this humble path, alone
How fragile is the heart
Oh, give these clay feet wings to fly
To touch the face of the stars

Breathe life into this feeble heart
Lift this mortal veil of fear
Take these crumbled hopes, etched with tears
We’ll rise above these earthly cares

Lyrics: Light after darkness, gain after loss
Strength after weakness, crown after cross;
Sweet after bitter, hope after fears
Home after wandering, praise after tears

Alpha and Omega
Beginning and the end
He is making all things new
Springs of living water
Shall wash away each tear
He is making all things new
​
Sight after mystery, sun after rain
Joy after sorrow, peace after pain;
Near after distant, gleam after gloom
Love aftеr wandering, life after tomb

Come and See: Let Us Also Go…

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Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.) So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.”

When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.”  Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days,  and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”

“But Rabbi,” they said, “a short while ago the Jews there tried to stone you, and yet you are going back?”

Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Anyone who walks in the daytime will not stumble, for they see by this world’s light.  It is when a person walks at night that they stumble, for they have no light.”

After he had said this, he went on to tell them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.”

His disciples replied, “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.” Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep.

So then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”

Then Thomas (also known as Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
John 11: 1-16

There were moments, hours even,
when it was clear what I

was meant to do, as if
a landscape had revealed itself

in the morning light.
I could see the road

plainly now, imagining myself
walking towards the distant mountains

like a pilgrim in the old stories—
ready to take on any danger,

hapless but always hopeful,
certain that my simple belief

in the light
would be enough.
~Joyce Sutphen “Those Hours” from Carrying Water to the Field

All the paths of the Lord are loving and faithful.
Psalm 25:10

All does not mean “all – except the paths I am walking in now”
or “nearly all” – except this especially difficult and painful path.

All must mean all.

So, your path with its unexplained sorrow or turmoil,
and mine with its sharp flints and briers –
and both our paths,
with their unexplained perplexity,
their sheer mystery –
they are His paths,
on which he will show Himself loving and faithful.
Nothing else; nothing less.
~Amy Carmichael–from You Are My Hiding Place

When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer from “The Cost of Discipleship”

When I need to walk down the grassy slope to the barn from our house at night, I risk falling without carrying a light to shine ahead of me. In darkness, I stumble and trip, unable to see where the ground dips or rises unexpectedly when I take a step.

Jesus is pointing out the obvious to his disciples: travel is safest in the daylight. What is not as obvious to them is what lies ahead for Him and them.

Nor is it obvious to us as we try to see through a glass darkly.

We know only that all paths of the Lord are loving and faithful, even when full of potholes, thorns, obstacles and hazards.

Our belief in His Light and His Word is enough.
Nothing else; nothing less.

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.

Lyrics:

In love, we find our way
With trust, hope remains

I’ll be here
Stay right here
Don’t you fear

In love, we find our way through the night
In love, we find our way

In love, we find a way
Your love leads the way

Tell me, where is the road
I can call my own,
That I left, that I lost
So long ago?
All these years I have wandered,
Oh when will I know
There’s a way, there’s a road
That will lead me home?

After wind, after rain,
When the dark is done,
As I wake from a dream
In the gold of day,
Through the air there’s a calling
From far away,
There’s a voice I can hear
That will lead me home.

Rise up, follow me,
Come away, is the call,
With the love in your heart
As the only song;
There is no such beauty
As where you belong;
Rise up, follow me,
I will lead you home.

Come and See: Greater Than All

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“For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.”

There was again a division among the Jews because of these words. Many of them said, “He has a demon, and is insane; why listen to him?”  Others said, “These are not the words of one who is oppressed by a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?”

At that time the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the colonnade of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.”

Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”

The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.”

 Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken— do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” Again they sought to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands.

He went away again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing at first, and there he remained. And many came to him. And they said, “John did no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true.” And many believed in him there.
John 10: 17-42

Quiet he lies
whose vigor hurled
a universe. He sleeps
whose eyelids have not closed before.
His breath (so slight it seems
no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps
to sprout a world.
Charmed by doves’ voices, the whisper of straw,
he dreams,
hearing no music from his other spheres.
Breath, mouth, ears, eyes
he is curtailed
who overflowed all skies,
all years.
~Luci Shaw from “Mary’s Song” from Accompanied by Angels: Poems of the Incarnation

When, in the cavern darkness, Jesus
opened his small, bleating mouth (even before
his eyes widened to the supple world his
lungs had sighed into being), did he intuit
how hungrily the lungs gasp? Did he begin, then,
to love the way air sighs as it brushes in and out
through the portals of tissue to sustain
the tiny heart’s iambic beating? And how,
fueled by air, the dazzling blood tramps
the crossroads of the brain like donkey tracks,
corpuscles skittering to the earlobes and toenails?

Bottle of the breath of God, speaking in stories,
shouting across wild, obedient water, his voice
was stoppered only by inquisition, unfaith
and anguish. Did he know that he would,
in the end, leak all his blood, heave a final
groan and throw his breath,
oxygen for the world, back to its Source
before the next dark cave?
~Luci Shaw “Breath” from Accompanied by Angels: Poems of the Incarnation

Greater than all –
Creator of breath and sky and dust –
yet came to us as helpless baby.

He who is the air we need –
resides in our cells, our blood, our lungs, our heart.

He who lays down His life for us –
then picks it up again –
we are made in His image.

Listen for Him –
watch Him change the sky –
know He fills us wholly
with His Words and Breath.

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.

The Dimmer Switch

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Hours and hours of taffy pulled and stretched
to the furthest reaches of neighborhood lawns, universe
of grasses cool and tickling, cushions
for our bodies somersaulting and cartwheeling, tagging
you’re it, while somewhere above us

the dimmer switch of Heaven would be turning
down to lavender rose and deeper rose, and then
the voices of the mothers streaming in
through the darkening air
to come home, come home.
~Andrea Potos “Summer, Childhood” from Her Joy Becomes

Once when we were playing
hide-and-seek and it was time
to go home, the rest gave up
on the game before it was done
and forgot I was still hiding.
I remained hidden as a matter
of honor until the moon rose.
~Galway Kinnell “Hide-and-Seek 1933” from Strong Is Your Hold.

We all long for home.

As the day wanes, the sky dims to pastels, the breezes pick up, I want to be called home: to warmth, to a good evening meal, to hugs and cozy bed.

No matter what excitement exists outside the four walls of home, I am eager for the comfort of finding my way home.

In the villages and towns all across Japan, there is a traditional folk song played daily in the early evening over loudspeakers in the streets – a reminder to the children of the neighborhood that it is time to give up their games and head home. They stream out of the parks and streets, each to their own house or apartment.

The song that thousands of U.S. soccer fans belted out after the World Cup soccer games was “Take me home, country roads.”

Last night, as I left an evening meeting at our local homeless mission shelter, I passed through the huge room housing over a hundred sleeping people on cots and floor mattresses. The overhead lights had been dimmed, each person safe, warm, fed, and welcome – no longer invisible and hidden away in the woods or alleys.

May we all know how it is to be welcomed home, when overwhelming darkness comes, knowing the Light always returns.

Come home, come home;
you who are weary come home…

Photo of children running home in Basque, France by William Albert Allard

Making Me Better Than What I Am

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At dusk, everything blurs and softens.  
From here out over the long valley,
the fields and hills pull up
the first slight sheets of evening,
as, over the next hour,
heavier, darker ones will follow.

Quieted roads, predictable deer
browsing in a neighbor’s field, another’s
herd of heifers, the kitchen lights
starting in many windows. On horseback
I take it in, neither visitor
nor intruder, but kin passing, closer
and closer to night, its cold streams
rising in the sugarbush and hollow.

Half-aloud, I say to the horse,
or myself, or whoever: let fire not come
to this house, nor that barn,
nor lightning strike the cattle.
Let dogs not gain the gravid doe, let the lights
of the rooms convey what they seem to.

And who is to say it is useless
or foolish to ride out in the falling light
alone, wishing, or praying,
for particular good to particular beings,
on one small road in a huge world?

The horse bears me along, like grace,
making me better than what I am,
and what I think or say or see
is whole in these moments, is neither
small nor broken. For up, out of
the inscrutable earth, have come my body
and the separate body of the mare:
flawed and aching and wronged. Who then
is better made to say be well, be glad,

or who to long that we, as one,
might course over the entire valley,
over all valleys, as a bird in a great embrace
of flight, who presses against her breast,
in grief and tenderness,
the whole weeping body of the world?
~ Linda McCarriston, “Riding Out at Evening” from Talking Soft Dutch

photo by Emily Vander Haak

On this, my 72nd birthday,
I pray for this troubled world, reminding myself:
be well, be glad…

I’m still here
by the grace of God who carries
not just me on His back through each day,
but all earthly burdens.

I pray like a bird embracing the air which lifts its wings,
tenderly holding to its breast a soaring freedom
to transcend the weeping world.

I have seen so much goodness over 72 years,
sometimes through tears of sorrow.
I know there will be more joy
and sadness before I’m done.

I am grateful, so very grateful
to have lived all these years
seeing tears shed, then dried,
learning how love heals,
knowing the only thing to last forever
is God’s covenant promise
to always carry us home.

photo by Brandon Dieleman
photo by Brandon Dieleman
video by Peter Tamminga


Whilst the world is weeping, let us do our bit.
We have the time to sympathise, to listen and to sit.
No needless thoughts, of the things we cannot do.
But appreciate all the good bits and look at them anew.
 
The warmth and comfort of our homes, the food we have to eat.
The family and friends we have, although we cannot meet.
The village that we live in, and the community we share.
So precious to us right now, so sit and think and care.
 
Whilst the world is full of sadness, anxiety and pain,
It’s hard to imagine our lives ever carefree again.
But nothing lasts forever, the clouds will always clear.
Let’s heal the world with love, so the sunshine can appear.
~Sandra Rickman

Lyrics:
Drop, drop, slow tears, and bathe those beauteous feet,
which brought from heaven the news and Prince of Peace.
Cease not, wet eyes, his mercies to entreat;
to cry for vengeance sin doth never cease.
In your deep floods drown all my faults and fears;
nor let his eye see sin, but through my tears.

Come and See: One Flock, One Shepherd

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“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 

When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.“

This figure of speech Jesus used with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.  The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.  

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.  He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. 

 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me,  just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.

So there will be one flock, one shepherd.“
John 10: 1-16

Not one that’s gently hinged or deftly hung,
Not like the ones you planed at Joseph’s place,
Not like the well-oiled openings that swung
So easily for Pilate’s practiced pace,
Not like the ones that closed in Mary’s face
From house to house in brimming Bethlehem,
Not like the one that no man may assail,
The dreadful curtain, The forbidding veil
That waits your breaking in Jerusalem.
Not one you made but one you have become:
Load-bearing, balancing, a weighted beam
To bridge the gap, to bring us within reach
Of your high pasture. Calling us by name,
You lay your body down across the breach,
Yourself the door that opens into home.
~Malcolm Guite “I Am the Door of the Sheepfold” from Parable and Paradox

The fence was down. 
 
Led by their bellwether bellies, the sheep
had toddled astray. The neighbor farmer’s woods
or coyotes might have got them, or the far road.
 
I remember the night, the moon-colored grass
we waded through to look for them, the oaks
tangled and dark, like starting a story midway.
 
We gazed over seed heads to the barn
toppled in the homestead orchard. Then we saw
the weather of white wool, a cloud in the blue
 
moving without sound as if charmed
by the moon beholding them out of bounds.
Time has not tightened the wire or righted the barn.
 
The unpruned orchard rots in its meadow
and the story unravels, the sunlight creeping back
like a song with nobody left to hear it.
~David Mason from “Mending Time” in The Sound: New and Selected Poems

When so much shepherding has gone so wrong,
So many pastors hopelessly astray,
The weak so often preyed on by the strong,
So many bruised and broken on the way,
The very name of shepherd seems besmeared,
The fold and flock themselves are torn in half,
The lambs we left to face all we have feared
Are caught between the wasters and the wolf.
Good Shepherd now your flock has need of you,
One finds the fold and ninety-nine are lost
Out in the darkness and the icy dew,
And no one knows how long this night will last.
Restore us; call us back to you by name,
And by your life laid down, redeem our shame.
~Malcolm Guite “I Am the Good Shepherd” from Parable and Paradox

On the surface, a sheep’s life looks pretty easy – grazing in beautiful pastoral settings, blending in as a member of a flock, with the primary job being prolific in wool and lamb production.

Sounds pretty swell, all in all.

Yet it can be a hard-scrabble existence with not enough food or water in rocky terrain that is steep and tough to traverse. The wool coat can be incredibly burdensome and hooves can get too long or too short and watch out for the “bloat.”

And then there are the enemies: just ready to pounce, eager to pick off the too young or too old or anyone just not paying attention. That’s why a Shepherd is so critical to our survival because they pay attention to threats and needs and are there to defend the defenseless.

I’ve been labeled a sheep for unquestioningly following directions given to me, preferring to blend in, and appreciating the wisdom of the Shepherd. I don’t consider being considered a sheep an insult. I know I don’t know everything, nor am I capable of finding everything I need when I need it and I’m certainly not strong enough to fend off my worst enemies.

How often do we, like sheep, wander astray – out of the broken down barn, or through the fallen fence, into the orchards of rotting delights?

And Someone, always Someone, comes looking for us, lost and always hungering and endangered. Someone, always Someone, lays down in the doorway to become the breach we need to stay safe and whole.

We need our Shepherd.
We know His voice.
He leads us home.

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.

On a Fine Golden Morning

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Whence comes Solace?—Not from seeing
What is doing, suffering, being,
Not from noting Life’s conditions,
Nor from heeding Time’s monitions;
But in cleaving to the Dream,
And in gazing at the gleam
Whereby gray things golden seem.

II

Thus do I this heyday, holding
Shadows but as lights unfolding,
As no specious show this moment
With its irised embowment;
But as nothing other than
Part of a benignant plan;
Proof that earth was made for man.
~Thomas Hardy “On a Fine Morning”

Whence comes Solace?
Cleaving to the dream, gazing at the gleam…

nothing other than
Part of a benignant plan;
Proof that earth was made for man.

I had to look up “benignant” – it is like being told a concerning tumor is “benign” – granting gracious kindness and beneficence in the midst of deep-seated worry.

A new lease on life.

We forget our original task of caring for the Garden.
Having soiled our own nest, we can’t abandon earth for another greener, brighter, happier planet. Of all the planetary options in this infinite universe, we were placed right here for good reason, and here we remain.

Our solace: all that ordinarily seems gray gleams golden
illuminated by the Light shining down on our shadowy selves.

Even when the news headlines are dismal,
when our individual struggles are great,
when human history seems to keep repeating itself,
our Creation is purposeful,
eternally preserved through divine sacrifice.

The solace of gray shadows melts to gold:
as part of the overall “benignant plan”
we have been given our life back.