Tag: God

It Made All the Difference

April 21, 2026 barnstormingblog3 Comments

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
~Robert Frost “The Road Not Taken”

Two lonely cross-roads that themselves cross each other I have walked several times this winter without meeting or overtaking so much as a single person on foot or on runners. The practically unbroken condition of both for several days after a snow or a blow proves that neither is much travelled.

Judge then how surprised I was the other evening as I came down one to see a man, who to my own unfamiliar eyes and in the dusk looked for all the world like myself, coming down the other, his approach to the point where our paths must intersect being so timed that unless one of us pulled up we must inevitably collide. I felt as if I was going to meet my own image in a slanting mirror. Or say I felt as we slowly converged on the same point with the same noiseless yet laborious stride as if we were two images about to float together with the uncrossing of someone’s eyes. I verily expected to take up or absorb this other self and feel the stronger by the addition for the three-mile journey home.

But I didn’t go forward to the touch. I stood still in wonderment and let him pass by; and that, too, with the fatal omission of not trying to find out by a comparison of lives and immediate and remote interests what could have brought us by crossing paths to the same point in a wilderness at the same moment of nightfall. Some purpose I doubt not, if we could but have made out.

I like a coincidence almost as well as an incongruity.
~Robert Frost from “Selected Letters”

What is there beyond knowing that keeps
calling to me? I can’t

turn in any direction
but it’s there. I don’t mean

the leaves’ grip and shine or even the thrush’s
silk song, but the far-off

fires, for example,
of the stars, heaven’s slowly turning

theater of light, or the wind
playful with its breath;

or time that’s always rushing forward,
or standing still

in the same — what shall I say —
moment.

What I know

I could put into a pack

as if it were bread and cheese, and carry it
on one shoulder,

important and honorable, but so small!
While everything else continues, unexplained

and unexplainable. How wonderful it is
to follow a thought quietly to its logical end.

….mostly I just stand in the dark field,
in the middle of the world, breathing in and out…
~Mary Oliver from “What is there beyond knowing”

When a man thinks happily,
he finds no foot-track in the field he traverses.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson from “Quotation and Originality”

Robert Frost enjoyed how readers misinterpreted his ironic “The Road Not Taken” poem. His point was not the road less traveled “made all the difference” but that the roads were in fact the same.

As humans living our daily lives, we have to make decisions that take us one way or the other, uncertain where our choices may lead us and likely never knowing if that choice made a difference at all.

Our assurance lies in understanding the Hand that guides us, should we allow Him to do so. We may choose a path that leads us astray; God continually puts up signposts that will guide us home. Our journey may be arduous, we may get terribly lost, we may walk alone for long stretches, we may end up crushed and bleeding in the ditch.

He follows the footprints we have left behind, so we that we may be found, rescued and brought home, no matter what.

And that — not the road we chose at the beginning — is what makes all the difference.

Lyrics

Those lives were mine to love and cherish
To guard and guide along life’s way
Oh God forbid that one should perish
That one alas should go astray

Back in the years with all together
Around the place we’d romp and play
So lonely now and oft’ times wonder
Oh will they come back home some day

I’m lonesome for my precious children
They live so far away
Oh may they hear my calling… calling.and come back home some day

I gave my all for my dear children
Their problems still with love I share
I’d brave life’s storm, defy the tempest
To bring them home from anywhere

I lived my life my love
I gave them, to guide them through this world of strife
I hope and pray we’ll live together
In that great glad here after life

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Come and See: Awake and Arise

April 19, 2026April 19, 2026 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Trusting All This to Be True

April 16, 2026April 16, 2026 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Trust that there is a tiger, muscular
Tasmanian, and sly, which has never been
seen and never will be seen by any human
eye. Trust that thirty thousand sword-
fish will never near a ship, that far
from cameras or cars elephant herds live
long elephant lives. Believe that bees
by the billions find unidentified flowers
on unmapped marshes and mountains. Safe
in caves of contentment, bears sleep.
Through vast canyons, horses run while slowly
snakes stretch beyond their skins in the sun.
I must trust all this to be true, though
the few birds at my feeder watch the window
with small flutters of fear, so like my own.
~Susan Kinsolving “Trust”

It’s like so many other things in life
to which you must say no or yes.
So you take your car to the new mechanic.
Sometimes the best thing to do is trust.
The package left with the disreputable-looking
clerk, the check gulped by the night deposit,
the envelope passed by dozens of strangers—
all show up at their intended destinations.
The theft that could have happened doesn’t.
Wind finally gets where it was going
through the snowy trees, and the river, even
when frozen, arrives at the right place.
And sometimes you sense how faithfully your life
is delivered, even though you can’t read the address.
~Thomas Smith “Trust”

When I stand at the window watching the flickers, sparrows, finches, juncos, grosbeaks, chickadees, and red-winged blackbirds come and go from the feeders, I wonder who is watching who.

They remain wary of me, fluttering away quickly if I approach with lens in hand. They fear capture, even within a camera. They have a life to be lived without my witness or participation. So much happens that I never see or know about.

I understand: I fear being captured too. I prefer to remain an enigma.

Even if only for a moment as an image preserved forever, I know it doesn’t represent all I am, all I’ve done, all I feel, all my moments put together. The birds and bees and snakes and horses are, and I am, so much more than one moment.

Only God sees us fully in every moment, witness to our freedom and captivity, our loneliness and grief, our joy and tears, our sleeping and waking, knowing our best and our worst.

And because He knows us so well and knows the address to which we will be delivered – in Him we must trust.

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Challenging the Dull and the Dead

April 13, 2026 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

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

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

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

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

Nothing seemingly has changed –
yet…
everything is changed.

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

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Come and See: The Seal of Approval

April 12, 2026April 12, 2026 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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A Break from Dread

April 11, 2026 barnstormingblog1 Comment

Maybe it ruins the story to say at the start that no one was hurt
the day Scotty Forester swung open the door of the family car,
climbed up, put one hand on the wheel and, then, while pushing
and pulling on buttons and knobs, he found and released

the brake, and it started, the silver-blue Mercury, to roll
down Robin Street, best street in the neighborhood for sledding,
for coasting on a bike with arms waving above your head,
Scotty gaining speed on the long sweep of that block, heading

toward the intersection, then into it, then speeding
through, the car beginning to slow as the street leveled out,
although, toward the end, Scotty going fast enough
to jump the curb before stopping, three feet from a gas pump.

Maybe knowing the ending ruins this story, but sometimes
we need a break from dread. We need to know that the car
did not crash, the child did not die. We need to briefly forget
that we live in a world where a car is gaining speed, and

no one seems to be at the wheel. We need to be more
like the dog Scotty drives past, who barks, and runs in circles
as he barks some more, driven by some circuitry we have lost
for loving this dangerous life, living it.
~Suzanne Cleary “Mercury”

A certain day became a presence to me;
there it was, confronting me — a sky, air, light:
a being. And before it started to descend
from the height of noon, it leaned over
and struck my shoulder as if with
the flat of a sword, granting me
honor and a task. The day’s blow
rang out, metallic — or it was I, a bell awakened,
and what I heard was my whole self
saying and singing what it knew: I can.
~Denise Levertov “Variation on a Theme By Rilke”

Faith is not the clinging to a shrine
but an endless pilgrimage of the heart.
Audacious longings,
burning songs,
daring thoughts,
an impulse overwhelming the heart,
usurping the mind-
these are all a drive towards serving Him
who rings our hearts like a bell.
It is as if He were waiting to enter
our empty, perishing lives.
~Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel from Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion

In the end,
coming to faith remains for all a sense of homecoming,
of picking up the threads of a lost life,
of responding to a bell that had long been ringing,
of taking a place at a table that had long been vacant.
~Malcolm Muggeridge

I saw the tree with lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed.

It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance.

I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Too much of the time, I worry.
I fixate on what I believe I can control in life
as I’m barreling down the hill in this runaway car
to an unknown fate.

It seems to me no one is at the wheel,
but I am wrong.

The end of my story is clear to God
so I can hand over my fear and dread
to His merciful care.

How might I appear to my Maker each day?
-my utter astonishment at waking up,
-my breathless gratitude despite each out-of-control moment,
-my pealing resonance
as like a bell, I’m struck senseless by life.

Lyrics
My father could use a little mercy now
The fruits of his labor
Fall and rot slowly on the ground
His work is almost over
It won’t be long and he won’t be around
I love my father, and he could use some mercy now

My brother could use a little mercy now
He’s a stranger to freedom
He’s shackled to his fears and doubts
The pain that he lives in is
Almost more than living will allow
I love my brother, and he could use some mercy now

My Church and my Country could use a little mercy now
As they sink into a poisoned pit
That’s going to take forever to climb out
They carry the weight of the faithful
Who follow ‘em down
I love my Church and Country and they could use some mercy now

Every living thing could use a little mercy now
Only the hand of grace can end the race
Towards another mushroom cloud
People in power, well
They’ll do anything to keep their crown
I love life, and life itself could use some mercy now

Yea, we all could use a little mercy now
I know we don’t deserve it
But we need it anyhow
We hang in the balance
Dangle ‘tween hell and hallowed ground
Every single one of us could use some mercy now
Every single one of us could use some mercy now
Every single one of us could use some mercy now

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Remembering Who I Am

April 9, 2026 barnstormingblog4 Comments

All day I try to say nothing but thank you,
breathe the syllables in and out with every step I
take through the rooms of my house and outside into
a profusion of shaggy-headed dandelions in the garden
where the tulips’ black stamens shake in their crimson cups.

I am saying thank you, yes, to this burgeoning spring
and to the cold wind of its changes. Gratitude comes easy
after a hot shower, when my loosened muscles work,
when eyes and mind begin to clear and even unruly
hair combs into place.

Dialogue with the invisible can go on every minute,
and with surprising gaiety I am saying thank you as I
remember who I am, a woman learning to praise
something as small as dandelion petals floating on the
steaming surface of this bowl of vegetable soup,
my happy, savoring tongue.
~Jeanne Lohmann “To Say Nothing But Thank You”

Returned from long travel, I sit
in the familiar, sun-streaked pew, waiting
for the bread and wine of holy Communion.
The old comfort does not rise in me, only
apathy and bafflement.

What shall we do about this?” I asked
my God…
~Jane Kenyon from “Woman, Why Are You Weeping?”

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
~Jane Kenyon “Let Evening Come”

We resist nightfall in our lives.

We fear the dark of violence and threats of war,
the suffering of innocent people who are harmed directly,
and those harmed by lack of resources
which go to bomb-making and dropping.

I wish I could remain forever sunshiny, vital and irreplaceable, living each moment with the energy I feel at dawn.

Yet I know that the forward momentum of time
inevitably winds me down to twilight.

We are not alone in our need to catch our breath,
to be still and grateful for each little thing –
each petal, each taste, each sun ray illuminating the dark.

What shall we do about this? we ask our God.

We savor what we will, with gratitude, as evening comes.
There is no stopping it as
our lungs fill with the breath of God, our Creator.

We are not left comfortless.

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…Or What’s a Heaven For?

April 8, 2026 barnstormingblog3 Comments

And God held in his hand
A small globe. Look, he said.
The son looked. Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour. The light burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows; a bright
Serpent, a river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.
On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky. Many people
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs. The son watched
Them. Let me go there, he said.
~R.S. Thomas “The Coming”

…for each of us has known the pleasure
of spring, the way it feels for something closed

to open: the soft, heavenly weather of arrival.
~Faith Shearin from “Geese” from Moving the Piano

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what’s a heaven for?
~Robert Browning from “Andrea del Sarto”

“Let me go there”
And You did. Knowing what awaited You.

Your arms out wide
to embrace us
who try to grasp
a heaven which eludes us.

This heaven, Your heaven
You brought down to us,
knowing our terrible need.

You wanted to come here,
knowing all this.

Holding us firmly
within your wounded grip,
You the Son
handed us back to heaven.

A sorrowful holy season of opening and emptying:
from cloistered tight
to reaching beyond our grasp.
Or what’s a heaven for?

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He Got Up!

April 5, 2026 barnstormingblog2 Comments

So what do I believe actually happened that morning on the third day after he died?
…I speak very plainly here…

He got up. He said, “Don’t be afraid.”

Love is the victor. Death is not the end. The end is life. His life and our lives through him, in him. Existence has greater depths of beauty, mystery, and benediction than the wildest visionary has ever dared to dream. Christ our Lord has risen.
~Frederick Buechner from The Magnificent Defeat

Since this moment (the resurrection), the universe is no longer what it was; nature has received another meaning; history is transformed and you and I are no more, and should not be anymore, what we were before.
~Paul Tillich, theologian

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall…

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.
~John Updike from “Seven Stanzas at Easter”

Our flesh is so weak, so temporary,
as ephemeral as a dew drop on a petal
yet with our earthly vision
it is all we know of ourselves
and it is what we trust knowing
of Him.

He was born as our flesh, from our flesh.
He walked and hungered and thirsted and slept
as our flesh.
He died, His flesh hanging in tatters,
blood spilling freely
breath fading
to nought
speaking Words
our ears can never forget.

And He rose again
as His flesh: ours
to walk and hunger and thirst alongside us
and here on this hill we meet together,
–flesh of His flesh–
here among us He is risen
–flesh of our flesh–
married forever
as the Church
and its fragile, flawed
and everlasting body.

The Lenten season is over; He is Risen!

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
2 Corinthians 4: 18

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