Tag: Bible

We Are No Longer Alone: Bowing Down

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When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him…
~Matthew 1:24

Who has not considered Mary
And who her praise would dim,
But what of humble Joseph
Is there no song for him?

If Joseph had not driven
Straight nails through honest wood
If Joseph had not cherished
His Mary as he should;

If Joseph had not proved him
A sire both kind and wise
Would he have drawn with favor
The Child’s all-probing eyes?

Would Christ have prayed, ‘Our Father’
Or cried that name in death
Unless he first had honored
Joseph of Nazareth ?
~Luci Shaw “Joseph The Carpenter”

It was from Joseph first I learned
of love. Like me he was dismayed.
How easily he could have turned
me from his house; but, unafraid,
he put me not away from him
(O God-sent angel, pray for him).
Thus through his love was Love obeyed.

The Child’s first cry came like a bell:
God’s Word aloud, God’s Word in deed.
The angel spoke: so it befell,
and Joseph with me in my need.
O Child whose father came from heaven,
to you another gift was given,
your earthly father chosen well.

With Joseph I was always warmed
and cherished. Even in the stable
I knew that I would not be harmed.
And, though above the angels swarmed,
man’s love it was that made me able
to bear God’s love, wild, formidable,
to bear God’s will, through me performed.
~Madeleine L’Engle “O Sapientia” in A Widening Light: Poems of the Incarnation edited by Luci Shaw

The hero of the story this season is the man in the background.

He is the adoptive father
who does the right thing rather than what he has legal right to do,
who listens to his dreams and believes,
who leads the way over dusty roads to be counted,
who searches valiantly for a suitable place to stay,
who does whatever he can to assist her labor,
who stands tall over a vulnerable mother and infant
while the poor and curious pour out of the hills,
the wise and foreign appear bringing gifts,
who takes his family to safety when the innocents are slaughtered.

He is only a carpenter, not born for heroics,
but steps up when called.
He is a humble man teaching his son a living,
until his son leaves to save the dying.
He is strong and obedient,
a tree bowing low to give up his fruit.

This man Joseph is the Chosen father,
the best Abba a God could hope for.

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This year’s Advent theme is from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s sermon on the First Sunday in Advent, December 2, 1928:

The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come. For these, it is enough to wait in humble fear until the Holy One himself comes down to us, God in the child in the manager.

God comes.

He is, and always will be now, with us in our sin, in our suffering, and at our death. We are no longer alone. God is with us and we are no longer homeless.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer – from Christmas Sermons

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We Are No Longer Alone: Fed and Filling

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The Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as this truth of the Incarnation.
~J.I. Packer from  Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus: Experiencing the Peace and Promise of Christmas

I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever.
~John 6:51



Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”
~Matthew 14:16

He has filled the hungry with good things…
~Luke 1:53

If there is one thing universal about human beings, it is that we must eat to grow, stay healthy, and stay alive. Feeding a hungry person is one of the most nurturing and loving actions available to us in our outreach to others.

I learned this first as a nurses’ aide in a rest home when I was a teenager. The most disabled residents depended on me to feed them, bite full by bite full. I could not rush them or they might not swallow properly and could aspirate. I needed to be aware of what they liked and didn’t like or it might end up back in my lap in much less appetizing form.

Later, as a mother feeding my children, especially late at night rocking in our rocking chair, I found those times to be some of the most precious hours I ever spent with them. I was able to make a tangible difference in their lives with a gift from myself — of myself.

So too, we are fed by God–from His Word, from His Spirit, from His Hand at the Supper as He breaks the bread, from His Body. Our eyes are opened, our hearts burn within us.

But the ironic truth is that with the Incarnation, the world – we mere human beings – fed and nourished God Himself. He thrived, grew, and lived among us because His mother nourished Him from her own body and His earthly father had a trade that made it possible to feed his family.

Feeding others as we are fed.
Feeding God when He chose to be helpless in our hands,
trusting and needing us as much as we trust and need Him.

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AI image created for this post

This year’s Advent theme is from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s sermon on the First Sunday in Advent, December 2, 1928:

The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come. For these, it is enough to wait in humble fear until the Holy One himself comes down to us, God in the child in the manager.

God comes.

He is, and always will be now, with us in our sin, in our suffering, and at our death. We are no longer alone. God is with us and we are no longer homeless.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer – from Christmas Sermons

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We Are No Longer Alone: Journeying Together

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God came to us because he wanted to join us on the road, to listen to our story, and to help us realize that we are not walking in circles but moving towards the house of peace and joy. 

This is the great mystery of Christmas that continues to give us comfort and consolation: we are not alone on our journey. The God of love who gave us life sent his only Son to be with us at all times and in all places, so that we never have to feel lost in our struggles but always can trust that he walks with us.

The challenge is to let God be who he wants to be. A part of us clings to our aloneness and does not allow God to touch us where we are most in pain. Often we hide from him precisely those places in ourselves where we feel guilty, ashamed, confused, and lost.  Thus we do not give him a chance to be with us where we feel most alone.

Christmas is the renewed invitation not to be afraid and to let him – whose love is greater than our own hearts and minds can comprehend – be our companion.
~Henri Nouwen from Gracias: A Latin American Journal

To journey for the sake of saving our own lives
is little by little to cease to live in any sense that really matters,
even to ourselves, because it is only by
journeying for the world’s sake –
even when the world bores and sickens
and scares you half to death –
that little by little we start to come alive.
~Frederick Buechner from The Sacred Journey

In journeyings often,
in perils of waters,
in perils of robbers,
in perils by mine own countrymen,
in perils by the heathen,
in perils in the city,
in perils in the wilderness,
in perils in the sea,
in perils among false brethren;
In weariness and painfulness,
in watchings often,
in hunger and thirst,
in fastings often,
in cold and nakedness.
~2 Corinthians 11:26-27

Oh, when we are journeying through the murky night
and the dark woods of affliction and sorrow,
it is something to find here and there a spray broken,
or a leafy stem bent down with the tread of His foot
and the brush of His hand as He passed;
and to remember that the path He trod He has hallowed,
and thus to find lingering fragrance and hidden strength
in the remembrance of Him as “in all points tempted like as we are,” bearing grief for us, bearing grief with us, bearing grief like us.
~Alexander MacLaren

We are called to journey in our lives;
some no further than the backyard,
some to the ends of the earth,
some to the moon and back.

The journey is not about the miles covered
but about the internal trek we all must make
on the crooked road of our hearts,
searching for that straight path back to God.

Much of the journey, inner or outer, is perilous,
yet reassured by the signs He has been
down that road before us, knowing the temptations,
and bearing the grief we will face.

There is but one map available and one map maker.
All roads lead to our eternal home
where He waits for us,
keeping the light on for us.

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This year’s Advent theme is from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s sermon on the First Sunday in Advent, December 2, 1928:

The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come. For these, it is enough to wait in humble fear until the Holy One himself comes down to us, God in the child in the manager.

God comes.

He is, and always will be now, with us in our sin, in our suffering, and at our death. We are no longer alone. God is with us and we are no longer homeless.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer – from Christmas Sermons

There is a joy in the journey,
There’s a light we can love on the way.
There is a wonder and wildness to life,
And freedom for those who obey.
All those who seek it shall find it,
A pardon for all who believe.
Hope for the hopeless and sight for the blind
To all who’ve been born of the Spirit

And who share incarnation with him;
Who belong to eternity, stranded in time,
And weary of struggling with sin.
Forget not the hope
That’s before you,
And never stop counting the cost.
Remember the hopelessness when you were lost?
~Michael Card

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We Are No Longer Alone: Reconciled and Rescued

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…the low is lifted high;
the stars shall bend their voices,
and every stone shall cry.

And every stone shall cry
in praises of the child
by whose descent among us
the worlds are reconciled.
~Richard Wilbur from “A Christmas Hymn”

Gentlemen, I have lived a long time and am convinced that God governs in the affairs of men.

If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?

I move that prayer imploring the assistance of Heaven be held every morning before we proceed to business.
– Benjamin Franklin at the Constitutional Convention of 1787

photo by Josh Scholten

We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.
We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.
– 2 Corinthians 5:20

Come, let us now resolve at last
  To live and love in quiet;
We’ll tie the knot so very fast
  That Time shall ne’er untie it.

The truest joys they seldom prove
  Who free from quarrels live:
‘Tis the most tender part of love
  Each other to forgive.

When least I seem’d concern’d, I took
  No pleasure nor no rest;
And when I feign’d an angry look,
  Alas! I loved you best.

Own but the same to me—you’ll find
  How blest will be our fate.
O to be happy—to be kind—
  Sure never is too late!
~John Sheffield “The Reconciliation”

It did seem odd this morning during my barn chores that our Haflinger gelding stood facing the back wall as I opened his stall door to give him his hay. For a moment I wondered if there was a problem with his appetite as he usually would dive right into his hay as soon as I threw it to him. A closer look told me the problem was with his hind end, not his front end: his heavy white tail was wrapped snugly around a J hook hanging on the stall wall meant to hold his water bucket. Instead now it held him — and wasn’t letting go. He had apparently been itching his butt back and forth, round and round on the handy hook and managed to wrap his tail into such tight knots on the hook that he was literally tethered to the wall. He was very calm about the whole thing; maybe just a little embarrassed.

He turned his head to look at me, appearing a wee bit pitiful. How long he’d been standing there like that through the night was anyone’s guess. I bet he no longer felt itchy.

I started to work at untying the tail knots to free him and found them wound so tight that loosening them required significant cooperation from my 1200 pound buddy. Unfortunately, any time I managed to almost unloop a knot over the hook end, he would pull forward, snugging it even tighter. 

Out of desperation I pulled out the scissors I keep in my barnjacket pocket. I cut one knot hoping that would be sufficient. Then I cut through another knot. Still not enough. I cut a third big knot and thank God Almighty, he was free at last. He sauntered over to his hay now with a chunk of his tail in my hand and a big gap in what was still left hanging on him. It may take a year to grow that missing hair back out.  But hey, it is only hair and at least someone kind and caring came along with a set of shears to release him painlessly from his captivity. 

I know what it is like to get tangled up in things I should give wide berth. I have a tendency, like my horse, to butt in where I best not be and then become so bound I can’t get loose again. It can take forever to free myself, sometimes painfully leaving parts of my hide behind.

So when I inevitably get tied up in knots again, or when I fall out of my comfortable, secure nest, I pray someone will come along to save me.  Better yet, I hope someone might warn me away from the things that hook me before I foolishly back right into them. 

I’ve got to loosen up and quit pulling the knots tighter.

I am humbled in my need.
I am humbled by my helplessness.

So I implore God for His steadfast, reconciling assistance –
as the sparrow on the ground, fallen from the nest,
as the horse bound by his knotted tail to the wall.

I trust God’s protecting, rescuing, forgiving Hand.

AI image created for this post

This year’s Advent theme is from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s sermon on the First Sunday in Advent, December 2, 1928:

The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come. For these, it is enough to wait in humble fear until the Holy One himself comes down to us, God in the child in the manager.

God comes.

He is, and always will be now, with us in our sin, in our suffering, and at our death. We are no longer alone. God is with us and we are no longer homeless.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer – from Christmas Sermons

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We Are Not Alone: Forgiven

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He who is devoid of the power to forgive
is devoid of the power of love. . . .
We can never say, ‘I will forgive you,
but I won’t have anything further to do with you.’
Forgiveness means reconciliation, and coming together again.
~Martin Luther King from The Gift of Love

I was your rebellious son,
do you remember? Sometimes
I wonder if you do remember,
so complete has your forgiveness been.

So complete has your forgiveness been
I wonder sometimes if it did not
precede my wrong, and I erred,
safe found, within your love,

prepared ahead of me, the way home,
or my bed at night, so that almost
I should forgive you, who perhaps
foresaw the worst that I might do,

and forgave before I could act,
causing me to smile now, looking back,
to see how paltry was my worst,
compared to your forgiveness of it

already given. And this, then,
is the vision of that Heaven of which
we have heard, where those who love
each other have forgiven each other,

where, for that, the leaves are green,
the light a music in the air,
and all is unentangled,
and all is undismayed.
-Wendell Berry “To My Mother”

It’s no wonder that this culture quickly becomes littered with enormous numbers of broken and now irreparable relationships. Politics itself becomes a new kind of religion, one without any means of acquiring redemption or forgiveness. Rather then seeing some people as right and others as mistaken, they are now regarded as the good and the evil, as true believers or heretics.
~Tim Keller from The Fading of Forgiveness

The heart’s reasons
seen clearly,
even the hardest
will carry
its whip-marks and sadness
and must be forgiven.

So few grains of happiness
measured against all the dark
and still the scales balance.

The world asks of us
only the strength we have and we give it.
Then it asks more, and we give it.
~Jane Hirschfield from “The Weighing”

photo by Bob Tjoelker

Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Luke 23:34

To think of the love God shares through His forgiveness,
granting infinite grace that knows no bounds:
this is a heaven where even mere reflected moonlight heals
the tangles and knots we make of our lives.

His Light rises to illuminate and soothe our sorrows and regrets,
as our sins are unraveled, smoothed, forgiven, and forgotten.

This year’s Advent theme is from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s sermon on the First Sunday in Advent, December 2, 1928:

The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come. For these, it is enough to wait in humble fear until the Holy One himself comes down to us, God in the child in the manager.

God comes.

He is, and always will be now, with us in our sin, in our suffering, and at our death. We are no longer alone. God is with us and we are no longer homeless.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer – from Christmas Sermons

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Leaving Ordinary Behind

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Days come and go:
this bird by minute, hour by leaf,
a calendar of loss.

I shift through woods, sifting
the air for August cadences
and walk beyond the boundaries I’ve kept

for months, past loose stone walls,
the fences breaking into sticks,
the poems always spilling into prose.

A low sweet meadow full of stars
beyond the margin
fills with big-boned, steaming mares.

The skies above are bruised like fruit,
their juices running,
black-veined marble of regret.

The road gusts sideways:
sassafras and rue.
A warbler warbles.

Did I wake the night through?
Walk through sleeping?
Shuffle for another way to mourn?

Dawn pinks up.
In sparking grass I find beginnings.
I was cradled here.
I gabbled and I spun.

As the faithful seasons fell away,
I followed till my thoughts
inhabited a tree of thorns

that grew in muck of my own making.
Yet I was lifted and laid bare.
I hung there weakly: crossed, crossed-out.

At first I didn’t know
a voice inside me speaking low.
I stumbled in my way.

But now these hours that can’t be counted
find me fresh, this ordinary time
like kingdom come.

In clarity of dawn,
I fill my lungs, a summer-full of breaths.
The great field holds the wind, and sways.
~Jay Parini from “Ordinary Time”

It can happen like that:
meeting at the market,
buying tires amid the smell
of rubber, the grating sound
of jack hammers and drills,
anywhere we share stories,
and grace flows between us.
  
The tire center waiting room
becomes a healing place
as one speaks of her husband’s
heart valve replacement, bedsores
from complications. A man
speaks of multiple surgeries,
notes his false appearance
as strong and healthy.
 
I share my sister’s death
from breast cancer, her
youngest only seven.
A woman rises, gives
her name, Mrs. Henry,
then takes my hand.
Suddenly an ordinary day
becomes holy ground.
~ Stella Nesanovich, “Everyday Grace,” from Third Wednesday

photo by Emily Gibson

The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground; for it is the past, and it is the future.
~Alfred North Whitehead

This is the last day of “ordinary time” in the church calendar.
Yet nothing in this moment is ordinary.

What matters, happens right at this very moment –
standing in the grocery store check out line,
changing a smelly diaper,
sitting in the exam room of the doctor’s office,
mucking stalls in an old barn.
Am I living fully in the present now?
Am I paying attention?

We are sentient creatures with a proclivity to bypass the here and now to dwell on the past or fret about the future. This has been true of humans since our creation. 

Those observing Buddhist tradition and New Age believers of the “Eternal Now” call our attention to the present moment through the teaching of “mindfulness” to dwell fully in a sense of peacefulness and fulfillment.

Mindfulness is all well and good but I don’t believe the present is about our minds. 

It is not about us at all.

The present is an ordinary day transformed by God to holy ground where we have been allowed to tread with Him who comes to walk alongside us in our travails:

We remove our shoes in an attitude of respect to a living God.
We approach each other and each sacred moment with humility. 
We see His quotidian holiness in all our ordinary activities.
We are connected to one another through His Word and promises.

There will be no other moment just like this one,
so there is no time to waste. 

Barefoot and calloused, sore and stumbling at times, together we step onto the holy and healing ground of Advent.

AI image created for this post — I burst out laughing when I saw what AI came up with for “walking on holy ground”!! Maybe it really isn’t too far off, as much of the time, I’m not sure if I’m coming or going and this illustrates that dilemma pretty well!

Pleni sunt caeli et terra gloria tua. Osana in excelsis. Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domina. Benedictus qui venit. Osana in excelsis. Agnus Dei, qui tolis peccata mundi. Dona nobis pacem.

Heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is he who comes. Hosanna in the highest. Lamb of God, Who take away the sins of the world. Grant us peace.

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A World of Hurt

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The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That’s the deal.
~C.S. Lewis from A Grief Observed

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain. 
~James A. Baldwin

We pay for hate with our lives, and that’s too big a price to pay.
~Brené Brown from Braving the Wilderness

We live in a world of hurt. We are consumed with hatred for all that is unjust and unfair because we are people who are in fear and in pain.

We get angry at what we don’t like or don’t understand and that includes the mystery of the ways of God.

We are a people struggling with profound irritability of the spirit.
We give no one the benefit of the doubt any more,
and that includes God.

We ask God why He doesn’t do something about the suffering we see everywhere, or the terrible hurt we feel ourselves. We want answers, and that includes answers from God.

Instead He asks us the same question right back:
What are we doing about the suffering of others?
What are we doing to understand our own misery?
Where are we seeking answers if not from His own Words?

God knows suffering and hurt.
He knows fear.
He knows what it is to be hated, far more than we do.
He took it all on Himself,
loving us so much because His pain was
part of the deal He made with us to rescue us.

With that realization,
we trade our pain for hope in Him,
our fear for trust in His promises,
and our hatred gives way to His sacrificial love.

Only then are we ready to respond to His call,
wrap ourselves within and around Him,
cling to His Word,
and feel His comfort for His people.

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear..
1 John 4:18a

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A Hole in the Heart

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Why shouldn’t we go through heartbreaks?
Through those doorways
God is opening up ways of fellowship with His Son.
Most of us fall and collapse at the first grip of pain;
we sit down on the threshold of God’s purpose
and die away of self-pity…
But God will not.
He comes with the grip of the pierced hand of His Son and says,
“Enter into fellowship with Me, arise and shine.”
If through a broken heart
God can bring His purposes to pass in the world,
then thank Him for breaking your heart.
~Oswald Chambers from “Ye are not your own” from My Utmost for the Highest

If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.
~C.S. Lewis from Mere Christianity

There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.
~ Blaise Pascal 

photo by Josh Scholten

Everyone is created with a hole in their heart that elicits no murmur, doesn’t show up on scans nor is it visible in surgery.  Yet we feel it, absolutely know it is there, and are constantly reminded of being incomplete. 

Billions of dollars and millions of hours are spent trying to fill that empty spot in every imaginable and unimaginable way. 

Nothing we try fills it wholly. Nothing we find fits it perfectly. Nothing on earth can ever be sufficient.

Certainly no elected official can heal this hole. They might make it even more gaping.

So we are born wanting, longing, yearning and searching;
we live hungry, thirsty and needy.

Created with a hankering heart for God, we discover only He fits, fills and is sufficient. Only Someone with a beating heart like ours can know our hollow heart’s emptiness. It is His bleeding that stops us from hemorrhaging all we have in futile pursuits.

The mystery of the vacuum is this:
how our desperation resolves
and misery comforted
by being made complete and whole
through His woundedness.

Through His pierced limbs and broken heart,
it is we who are made holy,
our emptiness filled forever.

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Saying Grace

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You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.
~G.K. Chesterton

Norman Rockwell’s 1951 painting Saying Grace

Chesterton has it right.  No matter what I embark on, I should say grace first.  Even my waking, my breathing and my sleeping. Even the brilliance right outside my back door.

Continual and constant thanks and praise to the Creator for all things bright and beautiful, and helping us through the dark times. 

Instead I am plagued with inconstancy and inconsistency, with a stubborn tendency to take it all for granted.

As I dip pen in ink this morning, join me in saying grace:

He is worthy. Amen and Amen.

Even more so.  Ever more now.

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Restless Sabbath Love

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The old church leans awry and looks quite odd,
But it is beautiful to us, and God.
~Stephen Paulus “The Old Church”

A little aside from the main road,
becalmed in a last-century greyness,
there is the chapel, ugly, without the appeal
to the tourist to stop his car
and visit it. The traffic goes by,
and the river goes by, and quick shadows
of clouds, too, and the chapel settles
a little deeper into the grass.

But here once on an evening like this,
in the darkness that was about
his hearers, a preacher caught fire
and burned steadily before them
with a strange light, so that they saw
the splendour of the barren mountains
about them and sang their amens
fiercely, narrow but saved
in a way that men are not now.
~R.S. Thomas “The Chapel”

It’s just a boarded-up shack with a tower
Under the blazing summer sky
On a back road seldom traveled
Where the shadows of tall trees
Graze peacefully like a row of gallows…

The congregation may still be at prayer.
Farm folk from flyspecked photos
Standing in rows with their heads bowed
As if listening to your approaching steps.
So slow they are, you must be asking yourself
How come we are here one minute
And in the very next gone forever?
Try the locked door, then knock once.

High above you, there is the leaning spire
Still feeling the blow of the last storm.
And then the silence of the afternoon . . .
Even the unbeliever must feel its force.
~Charles Simic, from “Wooden Church” from The Voice at 3:00 A.M.

The church knelt heavy
above us as we attended Sunday School,
circled by age group and hunkered
on little wood folding chairs
where we gave our nickels, said
our verses, heard the stories, sang
the solid, swinging songs.

It could have been God above
in the pews, His restless love sifting
with dust from the joists. We little
seeds swelled in the stone cellar, bursting
to grow toward the light.

Maybe it was that I liked how, upstairs, outside,
an avid sun stormed down, burning the sharp-
edged shadows back to their buildings, or
how the winter air knifed
after the dreamy basement.

Maybe the day we learned whatever
would have kept me believing
I was just watching light
poke from the high, small window
and tilt to the floor where I could make it
a gold strap on my shoe, wrap
my ankle, embrace
any part of me.
~Maureen Ash “Church Basement”

Mom,
You raised your hands while we sang this morning
like I’ve never known you to,
but I guess until recently I’ve never really known you in a church that let you feel alive.

Were you tired of hiding,
or just tired?

Thank you for letting yourself be seen.

Thank you, Lord, for her.
~Griffin Messer from “An Analysis of Worship Today”

There is so much wrong with churches overall,
comprised as they are of fallen people
with broken wings and fractured faith.
We who look odd and lean awry,
so keen to find flaws in one another
when we are already cracked open and spilling with our own.

Yet what is right with the church is
Who we pray to, why we sing and absorb the Word-
we are visible people joined together as a body
so bloodied, so bruised, yet being healed
despite our thoroughly motley messiness.

Our Lord of Heaven and Earth
rains down His restless love upon our heads
no matter how humble a building we worship in,
or how we look or feel today.

We are simply grateful to be alive,
eating a meal together,
mourning those we have lost,
coming together to raise our hands,
to kneel and bow in a humble house God calls His very own.

photo by Barbara Hoelle
AI image created for this post

The old church leans nearby a well-worn road,
Upon a hill that has no grass or tree,
The winds from off the prairie now unload
The dust they bring around it fitfully.

The path that leads up to the open door
Is worn and grayed by many toiling feet
Of us who listen to the Bible lore
And once again the old-time hymns repeat.

And ev’ry Sabbath morning we are still
Returning to the altar waiting there.
A hush, a prayer, a pause, and voices fill
The Master’s House with a triumphant air.

The old church leans awry and looks quite odd,
But it is beautiful to us and God.
~Stephen Paulus

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