A voice had begun to sing. It was very far away and…. hard to decide from what direction it was coming. Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes he almost thought it was coming out of the earth beneath them. Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself.
There were no words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise he had ever heard. It was so beautiful he could hardly bear it.
The earth was of many colors: they were fresh, hot, and vivid. They made you feel excited; until you saw the Singer himself, and then you forgot everything else. ~C.S. Lewis from The Magician’s Nephew
And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth. ~Raymond Carver “Late Fragment”
Beautiful things and varied shapes appeal to [the eyes], vivid and well-matched colors attract; but let not these captivate my soul. Rather let God ravish it; he made these things exceedingly good, to be sure, but he is my good, not they. ~St. Augustine
All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered. ~Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
Every time I open my eyes and listen for the voices of the morning, I am reminded how precious is this moment, how intense is each breath and each heartbeat.
We are created for this. We are, everyone of us, beloved. We are meant to wonder breathless at this, without ceasing.
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Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
So the Pharisees said to him, “You are bearing witness about yourself; your testimony is not true.”
Jesus answered, “Even if I do bear witness about myself, my testimony is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going, but you do not know where I come from or where I am going. You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one. Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is true, for it is not I alone who judge, but I and the Father who sent me. In your Law it is written that the testimony of two people is true. I am the one who bears witness about myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness about me.”
They said to him therefore, “Where is your Father?”
Jesus answered, “You know neither me nor my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father also.”
These words he spoke in the treasury, as he taught in the temple; but no one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come. John 8:12-20
I see your world in light that shines behind me, Lit by a sun whose rays I cannot see, The smallest gleam of light still seems to find me Or find the child who’s hiding deep inside me.
I see your light reflected in the water, Or kindled suddenly in someone’s eyes, It shimmers through the living leaves of summer, Or spills from silver veins in leaden skies,
It gathers in the candles at our vespers It concentrates in tiny drops of dew At times it sings for joy, at times it whispers, But all the time it calls me back to you.
I follow you upstream through this dark night My saviour, source, and spring, my life and light. ~Malcolm Guite “I am the Light of the World”
Those who do not yet share our faith can share our wonder at the beauty and comfort of light in the darkness, from the stars in the heavens to the candlelight at a service or over a shared meal. ~Malcolm Guite “The Light of the World is For Everyone”
Darkness is not where we will dwell forever. We are hushed in fear and hungry for Light. Jesus promises to feed us from Himself.
We are promised this in the Word: and night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light… Revelation 22:5.
Somewhere between the Word in the beginning and the Word that becomes flesh and the Word thriving as Spirit in our hearts and hands, there is the sacred silent Light of God come to earth
a threshold of quiet stillness as we stand poised to cross into the Light brought by His Word; He is a flint struck to our wick in our eagerness to abolish the Darkness with the eternal glow of His illuminating Word.
I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.
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And I was alive in the blizzard of the blossoming pear, Myself I stood in the storm of the bird–cherry tree. It was all leaflife and starshower, unerring, self–shattering power, And it was all aimed at me.
What is this dire delight flowering fleeing always earth? What is being? What is truth?
Blossoms rupture and rapture the air, All hover and hammer, Time intensified and time intolerable, sweetness raveling rot. It is now. It is not. ~Osip Mandelstam “And I Was Alive” (translated by Christian Wiman) from Stolen Air
Ordinary things have always seemed numinous to me. One Calvinist notion deeply implanted in me is that there are two sides to your encounter with the world. You don’t simply perceive something that is statically present, but in fact there is a visionary quality to all experience. It means something because it is addressed to YOU. ~Marilynne Robinson from The Paris Review 2008
We mostly live through routine and ordinary days, unconscious of many treasures and abundance laid before us.
In fact, these are addressed to us as pure gift – postmarked to our address, fully paid, no postage due.
Daily I search the soil of my life, this farm, this faith to find what in me still yearns to grow, to blossom, to fruit, in order to be harvested to share with others.
Such sweetness undoes our inevitable decay.
I am so grateful for the tie that binds me to those who visit this page, hoping what I share makes a difference in your ordinary, but still so precious, day.
The gift of ordinary time is now. Its numinosity is aimed at each one of us.
Poem by Dana Gioia
Echo of the clocktower, footstep in the alleyway, sweep of the wind sifting the leaves. Jeweller of the spiderweb, connoisseur of autumn’s opulence, blade of lightning harvesting the sky.
Keeper of the small gate, choreographer of entrances and exits, midnight whisper traveling the wires. Seducer, healer, deity or thief, I will see you soon enough— in the shadow of the rainfall, in the brief violet darkening a sunset—
but until then I pray watch over him as a mountain guards its covert ore and the harsh falcon its flightless young.
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A hundred thousand birds salute the day:– One solitary bird salutes the night: Its mellow grieving wiles our grief away, And tunes our weary watches to delight; It seems to sing the thoughts we cannot say, To know and sing them, and to set them right; Until we feel once more that May is May, And hope some buds may bloom without a blight. This solitary bird outweighs, outvies, The hundred thousand merry-making birds Whose innocent warblings yet might make us wise Would we but follow when they bid us rise, Would we but set their notes of praise to words And launch our hearts up with them to the skies. ~Christina Rossetti “A Hundred Thousand Birds”
Every day is perfect, if when you wake, you hear birds in the garden, in the yard. Birds
up and down, ushering in one more day in all the houses on Shaker Way. Birds on telephone lines, light posts. Birds
twit, twittering on trees hailing fellow birds with a nod of beak—gray kingbird;
top-hatted, streamertail tuxedoed, doctor bird— busy-bodied hummingbird
tucking in, out, of pink, red ixoras punch-drunk in love. Birds preening for, chatting up other birds—
the oriole, the grass quit, in mid-song on the lawn, in a dance of birds an all-day-long conference of bird;
red-headed woodpecker —drummer boy, or girl bird in this daily symphony of birds
—an orchestra on Shaker Way in serenade of each perfect day with birds— from the very first mockingbird
heralding, in solo warble one more day, filled with birds— brightened, lightened, trilled by birds:
Bird, bird, bird. Hello bird. You lift me up bird. You sing the day beautiful, bird. ~Ann-Margaret Lim “Birdsong of Shaker Way”
Birds afloat in air’s current, sacred breath? No, not breath of God, it seems, but God the air enveloping the whole globe of being. It’s we who breathe, in, out, in, the sacred, leaves astir, our wings rising, ruffled—but only saints take flight… But storm or still, numb or poised in attention, we inhale, exhale, inhale, encompassed, encompassed. ~Denise Levertov from “In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being”from The Stream and the Sapphire
As if reluctant to let go the setting sun last night, one lone bird still sang a twilight song, long after the others fell asleep, their heads tucked neatly under their wings.
This lone bird had not yet finished the day, breathing in and out its plaintive melody, articulating what my own thoughts could not say.
And before a hint of light this June morning, I am swept from my dreams at 4:30 AM by a full chorus singing from the same tree, no longer a lone voice, but hundreds.
Although my day is launched early by warbling songs, I cannot forget twilight’s one reluctant bird who fought back the impending darkness using only its voice.
I too resist the darkness with what I write here, if only I can keep it at bay: inhaling, exhaling, encompassed in holy Breath.
I want to sing out light and love to Light: encompassed by no darkness here.
I hear a bird chirping, up in the sky I’d like to be free like that spread my wings so high I see the river flowing water running by I’d like to be that river, see what I might find
I feel the wind a blowin’, slowly changing time I’d like to be that wind, I’d swirl and the shape sky I smell the flowers blooming, opening for spring I’d like to be those flowers, open to everything
I feel the seasons change, the leaves, the snow and sun I’d like to be those seasons, made up and undone I taste the living earth, the seeds that grow within I’d like to be that earth, a home where life begins
I see the moon a risin’, reaching into night I’d like to be that moon, a knowing glowing light I know the silence as the world begins to wake I’d like to be that silence as the morning breaks
He doesn’t know the world at all Who stays in his nest and doesn’t go out. He doesn’t know what birds know best Nor what I sing about, Nor what I sing about, Nor what sing about: That the world is full of loveliness.
When dew-drops sparkle in the grass And earth is aflood with morning light. light A blackbird sings upon a bush To greet the dawning after night, the dawning after night, the dawning after night. Then I know how fine it is to live.
Hey, try to open your heart to beauty; Go to the woods someday And weave a wreath of memory there. Then if tears obscure your way You’ll know how wonderful it is To be alive. ~Paul Read
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The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one’s curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sun-struck hills every day.
Where there is no risk, the emotional terrain is flat and unyielding, and, despite all its dimensions, valleys, pinnacles, and detours, life will seem to have none of its magnificent geography, only a length. It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between. ~Diane Ackerman from A Natural History of the Senses
…once more the quiet mystery is present to me, the throng’s clamor recedes: the mystery that there is anything, anything at all, let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything, rather than void: and that, O Lord, Creator, Hallowed One, You still, hour by hour sustain it. ~Denise Levertov “Primary Wonder” from Selected Poems
It’s strange to be here. The mystery never leaves you. ~John O’Donohue from Anam Cara
We must learn to acknowledge that the creation is full of mystery; we will never entirely understand it. We must abandon arrogance and stand in awe. We must recover the sense of the majesty of creation, and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. ~Wendell Berry from The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays
…being a living mystery: means to live in such a way that one’s life would not make sense if God did not exist. ~ Emmanuel Cardinal Suhard of Parisquoted in Walking on Water
It is our love affair with each day: even when the going is rough and the way is unknown territory.
The road I walk makes no sense without the knowledge God’s Hand created me, His breath becoming mine.
He forms the bridge over the chasm, so I may safely cross.
It’s astonishing, to be truthful. I want to point out the mystery to anyone who will listen so we can bow down together, amazed and awed.
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The night of the Perseid shower, thick fog descended but I would not be denied. I had put the children to bed, knelt with them, and later in the quiet kitchen as tall red candles burned on the table between us, I’d listened to my wife’s sweet imprecations, her entreaties to see a physician. But at the peak hour— after she had gone to bed, and neighboring houses stood solemn and dark— I felt no human obligation and went without hope into the yard. In the white mist beneath the soaked and dripping trees, I lifted my eyes into a blind nothingness of sky and shivered in a white robe. I couldn’t see the outline of the neighbor’s willows, much less the host of streaking meteorites no bigger than grains of sand blazing across the sky. I questioned the mind, my troubled thinking, and chided myself to go in, but looking up, I thought of the earth on which I stood, my own scanty plot of ground, and as the lights passed unseen I imagined glory beyond all measure. Then I turned to the lights in the windows— the children’s nightlights, and my wife’s reading lamp, still burning. ~Richard Jones “The Manifestation”
Perhaps as a child you had the chicken pox and your mother, to soothe you in your fever or to help you fall asleep, came into your room and read to you from some favorite book, Charlotte’s Web or Little House on the Prairie, a long story that she quietly took you through until your eyes became magnets for your shuttering lids and she saw your breathing go slow. And then she read on, this time silently and to herself, not because she didn’t know the story, it seemed to her that there had never been a time when she didn’t know this story—the young girl and her benevolence, the young girl in her sod house— but because she did not yet want to leave your side though she knew there was nothing more she could do for you. And you, not asleep but simply weak, listened to her turn the pages, still feeling the lamp warm against one cheek, knowing the shape of the rocking chair’s shadow as it slid across your chest. So that now, these many years later, when you are clenched in the damp fist of a hospital bed, or signing the papers that say you won’t love him anymore, when you are bent at your son’s gravesite or haunted by a war that makes you wake with the gun cocked in your hand, you would like to believe that such generosity comes from God, too, who now, when you have the strength to ask, might begin the story again, just as your mother would, from the place where you have both left off. ~Keetje Kuipers“Prayer”
Flung is too harsh a word for the rush of the world. Blown is more like it, but blown by a generous, unending breath. ~Annie Dillardfrom Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
How could it be possible?
The five year old me had a sudden terrifying revelation that I would some day cease to walk this earth.
The much older me is more afraid of the faster and faster rush of the days than of their end.
The world hurtles through space and time at a pace that leaves me breathless. Throughout my seventy-plus years, I have felt flung all too frequently, bruised and weary from hurry and hubbub.
I have need of Someone to stop me for a moment, sit down and begin the Story again with me, starting right where we left off.
Now, with retirement from daily work obligations: breathing space. I’m lifted lighter, drifting where I’m blown, less weighted down by the next thing to do and the next place to be.
Instead I can just be… part of the story to be told, part of the wonder. Blown by breath that loves, fills and nurtures, a generous promise hopeful and fulfilled.
I’m grateful for the opportunity to see, even in the dark, a manifestation of glory and love just beyond my vision, praying that one day I will see and know it clearly.
The old me ~ Blown upon.
If only the five year old me could have known.
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About the middle of the feast Jesus went up into the temple and began teaching. The Jews therefore marveled, saying, “How is it that this man has learning, when he has never studied?” So Jesus answered them, “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me. If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority. The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood. Has not Moses given you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law. Why do you seek to kill me?” The crowd answered, “You have a demon! Who is seeking to kill you?” Jesus answered them, “I did one work, and you all marvel at it. Moses gave you circumcision (not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers), and you circumcise a man on the Sabbath.If on the Sabbath a man receives circumcision, so that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me because on the Sabbath I made a man’s whole body well? Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.” John 7:14-24
The onening, she saw, the onening with the Godhead opened Him utterly to the pain of all minds, all bodies – sands of the sea, of the desert – from first beginning to last day. The great wonder is that the human cells of His flesh and bone didn’t explode when utmost Imagination rose in that flood of knowledge. Unique in agony, infinite strength, Incarnate, empowered Him to endure inside of history, through those hours when He took Himself the sum total of anguish and drank even the lees of that cup: within the mesh of the web, Himself woven within it, yet seeing it, seeing it whole, Every sorrow and desolation He saw, and sorrowed in kinship. ~Denise Levertov from “On a Theme from Julian’s Chapter XX”
Jesus seems perplexed: He came to deliver a new covenant with God’s people so why did those He came to save now seek to kill him?
Why are they angry when He healed one of their own, no matter what day of the week?
This makes no sense to the One who shares human cells with those who now want Him dead, with whom He came alongside to become “one,” experiencing all our pain and sorrows and loneliness.
He is “one-ning” with those who seek to crush Him.
Jesus is – incredibly – our kin within our skin, woven within us and yet, knowing all our sins, He still loves us and wants to bring us home to Him.
Amazing grace.
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.
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart’s core. ~William Butler Yeats “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”
O gentle bees, I have come to say That grandfather fell to sleep to-day. And we know by the smile on grandfather’s face. He has found his dear one’s biding place. So, bees, sing soft, and, bees, sing low. As over the honey-fields you sweep,— To the trees a-bloom and the flowers a-blow Sing of grandfather fast asleep; And ever beneath these orchard trees Find cheer and shelter, gentle bees. ~Eugene Field from “Telling the Bees”
Here is the place; right over the hill Runs the path I took; You can see the gap in the old wall still, And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook.
There is the house, with the gate red-barred, And the poplars tall; And the barn’s brown length, and the cattle-yard, And the white horns tossing above the wall.
There are the beehives ranged in the sun; And down by the brink Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed-o’errun, Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink.
A year has gone, as the tortoise goes, Heavy and slow; And the same rose blows, and the same sun glows, And the same brook sings of a year ago.
I can see it all now,—the slantwise rain Of light through the leaves, The sundown’s blaze on her window-pane, The bloom of her roses under the eaves.
Just the same as a month before,— The house and the trees, The barn’s brown gable, the vine by the door,— Nothing changed but the hives of bees.
Before them, under the garden wall, Forward and back, Went drearily singing the chore-girl small, Draping each hive with a shred of black.
Trembling, I listened: the summer sun Had the chill of snow; For I knew she was telling the bees of one Gone on the journey we all must go! ~John Greenleaf Whittier from “Telling the Bees”
If you talk to him, he will not pretend to be an ordinary man. He won’t let on he is one who isn’t afraid to hold in his outstretched hands the buzzing gold.
He won’t tell you he is the man who keeps farmers warm in their livelihood, or the man who keeps the grocery shelves full, then adds, simply for good measure, jars of his shining honey. He won’t explain that he is the one who sets his suffering neighbors free from their pain with gifts of jars that sting.
He won’t let on to be the lifegiver or a god. He will pretend he is just an old man with sand-colored hair, a blue truck heavy with breezy hives, and a comb-spinner in his cellar. ~Sidney Hall Jr., from This Understated Land
…The world was really one bee yard, and the same rules work fine in both places. Don’t be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to sting you. Still, don’t be an idiot; wear long sleeves and pants. Don’t swat. Don’t even think about swatting. If you feel angry, whistle. Anger agitates while whistling melts a bee’s temper. Act like you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t. Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved. ~Sue Monk Kiddfrom The Secret Life of Bees
He calls the honeybees his girls although he tells me they’re ungendered workers who never produce offspring. Some hour drops, the bees shut off. In the long, cool slant of sun, spent flowers fold into cups. He asks me if I’ve ever seen a Solitary Bee where it sleeps. I say I’ve not. The nearest bud’s a long-throated peach hollyhock. He cradles it in his palm, holds it up so I spy the intimacy of the sleeping bee. Little life safe in a petal, little girl, your few furious buzzings as you stir stay with me all winter, remind me of my work undone. ~Heid E. Erdrich, from “Intimate Detail” from The Mother’s Tongue
It was just like I was telling the bees last night. I saw two of them asleep inside the cup of a hollyhock, covered in pollen, just holding each other’s feet, just sleeping in the flower waiting for the sun to warm them so they could fly off. To see two of them curled up like that, it was very sweet. ~Diana Gabaldon/Matt Roberts from the final episode of Outlander TV series
A beekeeper must be a loving and patient person; the bees know who loves them, and who will always be there to care for them.
An old Celtic tradition necessitates sharing any news from the household with the farm’s bee hives, whether cheery like a new birth or a wedding celebration or sad like a family death. This ensures the hives’ well-being and continued connection to home and community – the bees are kept in the loop, so to speak, so they stay at home, not swarm and move on to a more hospitable place.
Each little life safe at home, each little life with work still undone.
Good news seems always easy to share; we tend to keep bad news to ourselves so this tradition helps remind us that what affects one of us, affects us all.
These days, with instant news at our fingertips at any moment, bad news is constantly bombarding us. Like the bees in the hives of the field, we want to flee from it and find a more hospitable home.
Our Creator (the ultimate Beekeeper) says personally to each of us: “Here is what has happened. All will be well, dear one. We will navigate your life together.”
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The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely. ~Louisa May Alcott
And as you sit on the hillside, or lie prone under the trees of the forest, or sprawl wet-legged on the shingly beach of a mountain stream, the great door, that does not look like a door, opens. ~Stephen Graham from The Gentle Art of Tramping
That great door opens on the present, illuminates it as with a multitude of flashing torches. ~Annie Dillard (in response to the above quote) from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
About living in the country? …peace can deafen one, beauty surprise No longer. There is only the thud Of the slow foot up the long lane At morning and back at night. ~R.S. Thomas
Ever since I started noticing how beautiful are the most humble things and the most humble people, I realized a great door was opened to me: the door to my own soul and my own happiness. I need go no further than my own back yard.
I must not forget my astonishment at the beauty around me even on the grayest of days, trudging the barnyard path to exhausted chores.
If ever I fail to see what is right in front of me, this Lord’s grace-given gift to my eyes and ears and arms, I do not deserve to put on boots or hold a pitchfork.
Lyrics Praise to the Lord of the small broken things Who sees the poor sparrow that cannot take wing Who loves the lame child and the wretch in the street Who comforts their sorrows and washes their feet
Praise to the Lord of the faint and afraid Who girds them with courage and lends them His aid He pours out his spirit on vessels so weak That the timid can serve and the silent can speak
Praise to the Lord of the frail and the ill Who heals their afflictions or carries them till They leave this tired frame and to paradise fly To never be sick and never to die Never die
Praise him, O praise Him all ye who live Who’ve been given so much and can so little give Our frail lisping praise God will never despise He sees His dear children through mercy-filled eyes
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After this Jesus went about in Galilee. He would not go about in Judea, because the Jews were seeking to kill him.
Now the Jews’ Feast of Booths was at hand. So his brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works you are doing. For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.” For not even his brothers believed in him.
Jesus said to them, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always here. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil.“
“You go up to the feast. I am not going up to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come.”
After saying this, he remained in Galilee. But after his brothers had gone up to the feast, then he also went up, not publicly but in private. The Jews were looking for him at the feast, and saying, “Where is he?”
And there was much muttering about him among the people. While some said, “He is a good man,” others said, “No, he is leading the people astray.” Yet for fear of the Jews no one spoke openly of him. John 7:1-13
Sometimes a lantern moves along the night, That interests our eyes. And who goes there? I think; where from and bound, I wonder, where, With, all down darkness wide, his wading light?
Men go by me whom either beauty bright In mould or mind or what not else makes rare: They rain against our much-thick and marsh air Rich beams, till death or distance buys them quite.
Death or distance soon consumes them: wind What most I may eye after, be in at the end I cannot, and out of sight is out of mind.
Christ minds: Christ’s interest, what to avow or amend There, éyes them, heart wánts, care haúnts, foot fóllows kínd, Their ránsom, théir rescue, ánd first, fást, last friénd. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins “The Lantern Out of Doors”
As swimmers dare to lie face to the sky and water bears them, as hawks rest upon air and air sustains them, so would I learn to attain free fall, and float into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace, knowing no effort earns that all-surrounding grace. ~Denise Levertov “The Avowal”
Where is my God? what hidden place Conceals thee still? What covert dare eclipse thy face? Is it thy will? When thou dost turn, and wilt be neare; What edge so keen, What point so piercing can appeare To come between? For as thy absence doth excell, All distance known: So doth thy nearenesse bear the bell, Making two one. ~George Herbert from “The Search”
It’s so easy to look and see what we pass through in this world, but we don’t. If you’re like me, you see so little. You see what you expect to see rather than what’s there. ~Frederick Buechner from The Remarkable Ordinary
Who goes there?
Deep in the darkness of time passing, when we are uncertain who or what we see, Christ is there, sometimes hidden from our awareness.
He is our friend, He is our ransom, our rescue, our refuge. Even when we can’t see him clearly.
We float, without effort on our part, in His grace. When it is His time, we will know, when His Light is no longer hidden.
I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.
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