Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.
Colossians 4:2
Prayer the Churches banquet, Angels age, Gods breath in man returning to his birth, The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage, The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth;
Engine against th’ Almightie, sinner’s towre, Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear, The six daies world-transposing in an houre, A kinde of tune, which all things heare and fear ;
Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse, Exalted Manna, gladnesse of the best, Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest, The milkie way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bels beyond the stars heard, the souls bloud, The land of spices, something understood. ~George Herbert “Prayer”
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Considering the distance between us and God,
seemingly insurmountable to overcome,
how amazing it only takes a few words to Him,
our pleas and praise,
our breath in His ear
and unhesitating
He plummets to us;
we are lifted to Him.
Heaven dwells in the ordinary,
in our plainness,
dresses us up, prepared to be understood
by no less than our Creator.
During this Lenten season, I will be drawing inspiration from the new devotional collection edited by Sarah Arthur —Between Midnight and Dawn
Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” John 3: 6-8
To look at the last great self-portraits of Rembrandt or to read Pascal or hear Bach’s B-minor Mass is to know beyond the need for further evidence that if God is anywhere, he is with them, as he is also with the man behind the meat counter, the woman who scrubs floors at Roosevelt Memorial, the high-school math teacher who explains fractions to the bewildered child. And the step from “God with them” to Emmanuel, “God with us,” may not be as great as it seems.
What keeps the wild hope of Christmas alive year after year in a world notorious for dashing all hopes is the haunting dream that the child who was born that day may yet be born again even in us and our own snowbound, snowblind longing for him. ~Frederick Buechner
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Christina Rossetti, a great 19th century poet, reminds us in her pithy earthy words below, how heaven could not hold God. Even though He is worshiped by angels, it is enough for Him to be held in His mother’s arms, His face kissed, His tummy full, to be bedded in a manger. It is enough for Him, and He is enough for us — even born in us, poor as we are — snowbound and ice-locked as we are in our longing for something more.
Our hearts are enough for Him who came here when heaven could not hold Him.
Imagine that.
~EPG
In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.
Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.
Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.
What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give Him my heart.
~Christina Rossetti 1872
Who hears?
Who hears the voice of the hungry, the thirsty?
Who sees?
Who sees the tears of the suffering ones?
Imagine a King who would come through the darkness
And walk where I walk, full of greatness,
And call me to His side,
Just like a Father and child.
Who knows?
Who knows the hopes that lie hidden forgotten?
Who comes?
Who comes to lead all the children home?
~Kristyn Getty
Still, still, still, One can hear the falling snow.
For all is hushed,
The world is sleeping,
Holy Star its vigil keeping.
Still, still, still,
One can hear the falling snow.
Sleep, sleep, sleep,
‘Tis the eve of our Saviour’s birth.
The night is peaceful all around you,
Close your eyes,
Let sleep surround you.
Sleep, sleep, sleep,
‘Tis the eve of our Saviour’s birth.
Dream, dream, dream,
Of the joyous day to come.
While guardian angels without number,
Watch you as you sweetly slumber.
Dream, dream, dream,
Of the joyous day to come.
The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up, as if orchards were dying high in space. Each leaf falls as if it were motioning “no.” And tonight the heavy earth is falling away from all other stars in the loneliness. We’re all falling. This hand here is falling. And look at the other one. It’s in them all. And yet there is Someone, whose hands infinitely calm, holding up all this falling. ~Rainer Maria Rilke “Autumn” translated by Robert Bly
Sometimes I wake from my sleep
with a palpitating start:
dreaming of falling,
my body pitching and tumbling
yet somehow I land,
~oh so softly~
in my bed,
my fear quashed and cushioned by
awaking safe.
I feel caught up,
held tightly,
rescued amid the fall
we all will do,
like leaves drifting down
from heaven’s orchard,
like seeds released like kisses
into the air,
the earth rises to meet me
and Someone cradles me there.
“All in all, it was a never-to-be-forgotten summer — one of those summers which come seldom into any life, but leave a rich heritage of beautiful memories in their going — one of those summers which, in a fortunate combination of delightful weather, delightful friends and delightful doing, come as near to perfection as anything can come in this world.” ~ L.M. Montgomery, Anne’s House of Dreams
Time lurches ahead in imprecisely measured chunks. Sometimes the beginning and ending of seasons are the yardstick, or celebrating a holiday or a birthday. Memories tend to be stickiest surrounding a milestone event: a graduation, a move, a wedding, a birth, a road trip, a funeral.
But Summer needs nothing so remarkable to be memorable. It simply stands on its own in all its extravagant abundance of light and warmth and growth and color stretching deep within the rising and setting horizons. Each long day can feel like it must last forever, never ending, yet it does eventually wind down, spin itself out, darkening gradually into shadow. We let go with reluctance; we feel as if no summer like it will ever come again.
Yet another will, somehow, somewhere, someday. Surely a never-ending summer is what heaven itself will be.
Perfectly delightful and delightfully perfect. We’ve already had a taste.
There is no place to hide here
from yourself and what you fear.
The meadowlark will break your heart
the magpie steal your breakfast
and once you’ve seen the buffalo graze on Sage Creek
they will rumble through your dreams forever.
Diane Weddington in Badlands III
It seems hopelessness may be all that thrives in this loneliest of places where wind chews at the rocks. But there is toughness and remarkable color and diversity too. Hope cannot die where the sunrise and sunset create a portrait of paradise for a few brief minutes twice each day.
Yet despite it all grass grows here, in patches and strips, pulling moisture from the thin topsoil veneer.
Near dusk, near a path, near a brook, we stopped, I in disquiet and dismay for the suffering of someone I loved, the doe in her always incipient alarm.
All that moved was her pivoting ear the reddening sun was shining through transformed to a color I’d only seen in a photo of a new child in a womb.
Nothing else stirred, not a leaf, not the air, but she startled and bolted away from me into the crackling brush.
The part of my pain which sometimes releases me from it fled with her, the rest, in the rake of the late light, stayed. ~C. K. Williams “The Doe”
Oh little one
to have been born
in June over three decades ago
so wanted
so anticipated
but lost too soon
gone as swiftly
as a doe disappearing in a thicket,
a memory that makes me question
if you were real,
but you were
and you are
and someday
I’ll know you when I see you.
I’m glad I am alive, to see and feel The full deliciousness of this bright day, That’s like a heart with nothing to conceal; The young leaves scarcely trembling; the blue-grey Rimming the cloudless ether far away; Brairds, hedges, shadows; mountains that reveal Soft sapphire; this great floor of polished steel Spread out amidst the landmarks of the bay. ~William Allingham from “On a Forenoon of Spring”
Spring is wrapping itself up
in blue skies and cotton candy dawns,
rows of crop sprouts
dots of fruit among fresh leaves.
There is hope renewed here in water and landscape,
a foretaste of heaven.
These glowing leaves made of the light a place That time and light would leave. The wind came cool, And then I knew that I was present in The long age of the passing world, in which I once was not, now am, and will not be, And in that time, beneath the changing tree, I rested in a keeping not my own. ~Wendell Berry from “The Sky Bright after Summer-Ending Rain”
How briefly we stay here, mere shadows,
how transient our breath and pulse,
knowing all that was, or is, or will be
rests in You, abides in You, is kept by You.
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. ~W.B. Yeats
My dreams are petals soft as silk
under your feet,
tender enough to bruise,
but oh there are so many more
where those came from.
Barnstorming 