Category: scripture

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.

Consumed by Harrowing Fire

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(War Time)

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
~Sara Teasdale “There Will Come Soft Rains”

…one of man’s purposes is to assist God
in the work of “hallowing” the things of Creation.
By a tremendous heave of the spirit,
the devout man frees the divine sparks
trapped in the mute things of time;
he uplifts the forms and moments of creation,
bearing them aloft
into the rare air and hallowing fire
in which all clays must shatter and burst.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

The fire burst the house and let it slam flat down, puffing out skirts of spark and smoke.

The crash. The attic smashing into kitchen and parlour. The parlour into cellar, cellar into sub-cellar.

Smoke and silence. A great quantity of smoke.

Dawn showed faintly in the east. Among the ruins, one wall stood alone. Within the wall, a last voice said, over and over again and again, even as the sun rose to shine upon the heaped rubble
and steam:

“Today is August 5, 2026, today is August 5, 2026, today is…”

~Ray Bradbury from the end of his 1950 short story “There Will Come Soft Rains”

So much of the world is beset by smoke and ashes this summer.

Not only are the fires roaring uncontrolled across landscapes, consuming everything in their path,
but harrowing fires burn within us as well.

We too are consumed,
left in a haze of gray and dust.

Even the smoke-painted sun traverses the sky
and then settles and sets,
swallowed by a seed puff ball,
absorbed and hallowed.

Like us, may it be released aloft this morning
transformed like a seed freed to the wind,
to rise unfettered and holy.

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.

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.

Come and See: Eyes Opened and Closed

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They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was a Sabbath. Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. “He put mud on my eyes,” the man replied, “and I washed, and now I see.”

Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.” But others asked, “How can a sinner perform such signs?” So they were divided.

Then they turned again to the blind man, “What have you to say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” The man replied, “He is a prophet.” They still did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they sent for the man’s parents.  “Is this your son?” they asked. “Is this the one you say was born blind? How is it that now he can see?”

“We know he is our son,” the parents answered, “and we know he was born blind.  But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don’t know. Ask him. He is of age; he will speak for himself.”  His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders, who already had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. That was why his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”

A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. “Give glory to God by telling the truth,” they said. “We know this man is a sinner.” He replied, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!”

Then they asked him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” He answered, “I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?” Then they hurled insults at him and said, “You are this fellow’s disciple! We are disciples of Moses! We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from.”

The man answered, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will.  Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out.

Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” “Who is he, sir?” the man asked. “Tell me so that I may believe in him.” Jesus said, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.” Then the man said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.

Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.” Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?” Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.
John 9: 13-41

When we look long at one another,
we soften, we relent, listen,

might forgive. We allow for silence
—and when we see each other,

are known, and in that moment
might change

though nothing has moved
or been spoken.

There are some who say
the walls cannot be broken,

but suddenly we are in a free place,
and the fields

that extend from its center
stretch for miles

as if out of the pupil and the iris
of that momentary kingdom.
~Annie Lighthart “When We Look” from Pax

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”

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.
I modernise the anachronism

of my language, but he is no more here
than before. Genes and molecules
have no more power to call
him up than the incense of the Hebrews

at their altars. My equations fail
as my words do. What resources have I
other than the emptiness without him of my whole
being, a vacuum he may not abhor?
~R.S. Thomas “The Absence”

We cannot recognize our blindness,
unaware of what we can’t see and don’t know,
until our eyes are opened.

Before that happens,
all we know is the emptiness behind our closed eyes.

How can we know what vision we are capable of
until suddenly, miraculously,
it is given to us in a gift of grace.

Lord, banish the blindness of my guilt,
fill the vacuum of my emptiness with your love,
allow me to see — not only the world around me,
but to look deeply into other open eyes
and see You reflected.

Open up my eyes, so I might see
That You have made these ways for me
Open up my eyes so I may see
That You my God, will walk with me
~Chorus lyrics from All My Ways are Known to You

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.

Come And See: As Clear as Mud

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As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

 “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. “Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.

His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, “Isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg?”  Some claimed that he was.

Others said, “No, he only looks like him.”

But he himself insisted, “I am the man.”

“How then were your eyes opened?” they asked.

He replied, “The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see.”

Where is this man?” they asked him.

“I don’t know,” he said.
John 9:1-12

The Lord came: what did He do?
He set forth a great mystery.
He spat on the ground, He made clay of His spittle;
for the Word was made flesh. 
And He anointed the eyes of the blind man. 
The anointing had taken place, and yet he saw not.
He sent him to the pool which is called Siloam.
But it was John’s concern
to call our attention to the name of this pool;
and he adds, Which is interpreted, Sent. 
You understand now who it is that was sent;
for had He not been sent,
none of us would have been set free from iniquity.
Accordingly he washed his eyes in that pool
which is interpreted, Sent —
he was baptized in Christ.
~Augustine from Tractate 44 on John

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod,
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “God’s Grandeur”

A man that looks on glass
On it may stay his eye;
Or if he pleaseth, through it pass,
And then the heav’n espy.

All may of Thee partake:
Nothing can be so mean,
Which with his tincture—”for Thy sake”—
Will not grow bright and clean.
~George Herbert from “The Elixir”

We came from dust in the beginning,
choosing to wallow in mud of our own making.

And Christ lives among us and our muddy messes.

Yet He is even more:
when Christ heals the blind man,
He mixes the dusty earth and His own spit —
using holy mud to anoint unseeing eyes
which heal glass-clear with washing.

Christ – sent to cleanse and restore us
with God’s deep and abiding grace.

We once were blind, but now we see…

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.

Let Us Gather a Vase of Flowers

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Master, how serene
Are all the hours
We waste
If, as we waste them,
We place them in a vase
Like flowers.

There are no sorrows
In our lives
Nor joys either.
Let us learn then,
Innocent sages,
Not to live life,

But to pass through it,
Tranquil, serene,
Taking children
As our teachers,
Eyes full
Of Nature . . .

Beside a river,
Beside a road,
Wherever we are,
Living life
With the same
Light ease.

Let us gather flowers.
Let us bathe our hands
In the calm rivers,
And from them
Learn their calm.

[12 June, 1914]
~Fernando Pessoa from “Ode 1” translated from Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa & Patricio Ferrari

How fresh, oh Lord, how sweet and clean 
Are thy returns! even as the flowers in spring; 
To which, besides their own demean, 
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring. 
Grief melts away 
Like snow in May,
As if there were no such cold thing. 

Who would have thought my shriveled heart 
Could have recovered greenness? It was gone 
  Quite underground; as flowers depart 
To see their mother-root, when they have blown, 
Where they together 
All the hard weather
Dead to the world, keep house unknown. 

 These are thy wonders, Lord of power, 
Killing and quickening, bringing down to hell 
And up to heaven in an hour; 
Making a chiming of a passing-bell. 
We say amiss 
This or that is: 
Thy word is all, if we could spell. 

         Oh that I once past changing were, 
Fast in thy Paradise, where no flower can wither! 
Many a spring I shoot up fair, 
Offering at heaven, growing and groaning thither; 
Nor doth my flower 
Want a spring shower, 
My sins and I joining together. 

But while I grow in a straight line, 
Still upwards bent, as if heaven were mine own, 
Thy anger comes, and I decline: 
What frost to that? what pole is not the zone 
Where all things burn, 
When thou dost turn, 
And the least frown of thine is shown? 

And now in age I bud again, 
After so many deaths I live and write; 
I once more smell the dew and rain, 
And relish versing. Oh, my only light, 
It cannot be 
That I am he 
On whom thy tempests fell all night. 

These are thy wonders, Lord of love, 
To make us see we are but flowers that glide; 
Which when we once can find and prove, 
Thou hast a garden for us where to bide; 
Who would be more, 
Swelling through store, 
Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.
~George Herbert “The Flower”

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
~Li-Young Lee from “From Blossoms”

Our small church has a couple of gracious and kind gardeners who share the produce from their yards and fields each week to provide a fresh bouquet to sit on the table in front of our humble wooden pulpit.

It is a special treat to walk into church and see what they brought to the altar to share with us all on Sunday morning. I keep a photo album of these very unique Sunday “pulpit posies” our keepers of gardens share.

Why are these arrangements special?
After all, almost every church displays a floral arrangement every Sunday.

These are special as many of these flowers are seeded, watered, fertilized and nurtured by one of our own, grown with love and caring, just as God cares for each of His children.

These are special as some are considered simple weeds, and are gleaned from ditches and hedges. They are part of God’s creation and have a wild beauty that can be as breathtaking as a hothouse orchid.

These are special because they often go home with a congregant or visitor who will enjoy their loveliness for many more days, as if they represent the manifestation of God’s Word itself.

Some of us are dahlias, zinnias and roses.
Some of us are rare gardenias and orchids.
Most of us are dandelions, sagebrush, Queen Anne’s lace,
fireweed, burdock, and daisies thriving
in the crevasses, ditches and hedgerows of life.

No matter which roots we sprout from, or where, we are the wonders of our loving gardening God. He created us to take care of His creation.

Each week, we bud afresh for Him.

Come and See: Who Do You Think You Are?

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The Jews answered him, “Aren’t we right in saying that you are a Samaritan and demon-possessed?”

“I am not possessed by a demon,” said Jesus, “but I honor my Father and you dishonor me. I am not seeking glory for myself; but there is one who seeks it, and he is the judge. Very truly I tell you, whoever obeys my word will never see death.”

At this they exclaimed, “Now we know that you are demon-possessed! Abraham died and so did the prophets, yet you say that whoever obeys your word will never taste death. Are you greater than our father Abraham? He died, and so did the prophets.

Who do you think you are?”

Jesus replied, “If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me. Though you do not know him, I know him. If I said I did not, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and obey his word. Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.”

“You are not yet fifty years old,” they said to him, “and you have seen Abraham!”

 “Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!” At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.
John 8: 48-59

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God.

That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell.

You must make your choice.

Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher.

He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. …

Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.
~C.S. Lewis from Mere Christianity

I am all at once what Christ is,
since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd,
patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection“

He says emphatically: Before Abraham, I am.

He is the Lord,
not liar nor lunatic.

He rains upon our thirsting earth
with shining drops of living water.

We are saved from the drought
of unbelief and skepticism.

Who do we think He is?
He is the immortal I AM.

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.

Seeing Clearly

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Things said or done long years ago,
Or things I did not do or say
But thought that I might say or do,
Weigh me down, and not a day
But something is recalled,
My conscience or my vanity appalled.
~William Butler Yeats from “Vacillation”

photo by Emily Dieleman

We wanted to confess our sins but there were no takers.
White clouds refused to accept them, and the wind
Was too busy visiting sea after sea.
We did not succeed in interesting the animals.
Dogs, disappointed, expected an order,
A cat, as always immoral, was falling asleep.
A person seemingly very close
Did not care to hear of things long past.
Conversations with friends over vodka or coffee
Ought not be prolonged beyond the first sign of boredom.
It would be humiliating to pay by the hour
A man with a diploma, just for listening.
Churches. Perhaps churches. But to confess there what?
That we used to see ourselves as handsome and noble
Yet later in our place an ugly toad
Half-opens its thick eyelid
And one sees clearly: “That’s me.”
~Czeslaw Milosz “At a Certain Age”

photo by Nate Gibson

I have a brief confession
that I would like to make.
If I don’t get it off my chest
I’m sure my heart will break.

I didn’t do my reading.
I watched TV instead—
while munching cookies, cakes, and chips
and cinnamon raisin bread.

I didn’t wash the dishes.
I didn’t clean the mess.
Now there are roaches eating crumbs—
a million, more or less.

I didn’t turn the TV off.
I didn’t shut the light.
Just think of all the energy
I wasted through the night.

I feel so very guilty.
I did a lousy job.
I hope my students don’t find out
that I am such a slob.
~Bruce Lansky “Confession”

Norman Rockwell’s “Before the Shot”
photo by Barb Hoelle

We all have confessions we could make.
We all want to avoid admitting mistakes and failings.
We all live under the black cloud of knowing our guilt and shame.

I have plenty of opportunity to replay the many moments I’ve regretted what I said or did,
or what I could have said or did….and didn’t.
Recalling remorse is far easier and stickier
than replaying joy that seems so fleeting in my memory.

There are times when I feel both weighed down by memories
and freed at the same time.

It almost always happens while sitting in worship in church,
silently confessing how I have wronged those around me
or turned my face from God.

Yet in the next moment,
I feel the embrace of a Creator who never forgets but still forgives.
It is an overwhelming knowledge that brings me to tears every time.

It is in that moment that my joy no longer is fleeting;
it lives deeply in my cells since I, like all around me,
am created in His image.

And no, we don’t look like a toad.

God saw what He made in His image,
and it was, and still is, good –
though flawed in our own choices.
He made each of us out of love for us,
not out of regret.
We each open our heavy eyelids, see His Face
and can say, “That’s me.”

toad picture by Josh Scholten