This is what the Lord says to me: “I will remain quiet and will look on from my dwelling place, like shimmering heat in the sunshine, like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.” Isaiah 4:18
When all nature is at rest, not a leaf moving, then at evening the dew comes down — no eye to see the pearly drops descending, no ear to hear them falling on the verdant grass — so does the Spirit come to you who believe. When the heart is at rest in Jesus — unseen, unheard by the world — the Spirit comes, and softly fills the believing soul, quickening all, renewing all within. ~Robert Murray McCheynefrom The Love of Christ
Amid daily hubbub, there comes a time when I must be quiet myself, devoid of selfish desires and hushing pointless ambitions. I need rest and renewal with a refreshing of purpose.
Only when I am thus silent and still – receptive and emptied of self, I am ready.
It is then I am touched, filled oh so softly, without fireworks or thunderclap, or dramatic collapse. The Spirit descends like silent dew onto my longing heart.
I wake restored, a new life quickened within me.
It is that simple. And so gentle.
This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is taken from 2 Corinthians 4: 18: 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.
Sometimes they left me for the day while they went — what does it matter where — away. I sat and watched her work the dough, then turn the white shape yellow in a buttered bowl.
A coleus, wrong to my eye because its leaves were red, was rooting on the sill in a glass filled with water and azure marbles. I loved to see the sun pass through the blue.
“You know,” she’d say, turning her straight and handsome back to me, “that the body is the temple of the Holy Ghost.”
The Holy Ghost, the oh, oh … the uh oh, I thought, studying the toe of my new shoe, and glad she wasn’t looking at me.
Soon I’d be back in school. No more mornings at Grandma’s side while she swept the walk or shook the dust mop by the neck.
If she loved me why did she say that two women would be grinding at the mill, that God would come out of the clouds when they were least expecting him, choose one to be with him in heaven and leave the other there alone? ~Jane Kenyon “Staying at Grandma’s” from Let Evening Come
(For Sarah Innes Blos, in memory of Stephen) Although we always come this way I never noticed before that the poplars growing along the ravine shine pink in the light of a winter dawn. What am I going to say in my letter to Sarah- -a widow at thirty-one, alone in the violence of her grief, sleepless, in doubt about the goodness of life, and utterly cast down? I look at the lithe trees more carefully remembering Stephen the photographer. With the hunger of two I take them in. Perhaps I can tel1 her that. The dog furrows his brow while pissing long and thoughtfully against an ancient hemlock. The snow turns the saffron of a monk’s robe and acrid steam ascends. Looking for God is the first thing and the last, but in between so much trouble, so much pain. Far up in the woods where no one goes deer take their ease under the great pines, nose to steaming nose …. ~Jane Kenyon “With the Dog at Sunrise”
I never got to stay alone with either of my Grandmas. One died young of cancer before I was born and the other, like Jane Kenyon’s grandmother, ran a chaotic household of boarders. My parents would not have trusted me to her care given everything else she was responsible for. Plus she also possessed a very fundamentalist world view as a faithful-to-the-Bible church goer who could have scared me to death with her dire interpretation of scripture.
I’m relieved it wasn’t fear that led me to a belief in a Trinitarian God. There is no question faith is a hard road, tested in challenging ways along the way, but God is the first thing and the last, the Alpha and Omega. In between, we must search out His Face every day, knowing how hidden He can be.
Understanding this, I still check the clouds every day, just in case I might miss His coming.
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Spend your life trying to understand it, and you will lose your mind; but deny it and you will lose your soul. ~St. Augustine in his work “On the Trinity”
Here are two mysteries for the price of one — the plurality of persons within the unity of God, and the union of Godhead and manhood in the person of Jesus. . . . Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as is this truth of the Incarnation. ~J. L. Packer from Knowing God
It is not easy to find a name that will suitably express so great an excellence, unless it is better to speak in this way: the Trinity, one God, of whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things. Thus the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and each of these by Himself, is God, and at the same time they are all one God; and each of them by Himself is a complete substance, and yet they are all one substance.
The Father is not the Son nor the Holy Spirit; the Son is not the Father nor the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit is not the Father nor the Son: but the Father is only Father, the Son is only Son, and the Holy Spirit is only Holy Spirit.
To all three belong the same eternity, the same unchangeableness, the same majesty, the same power. In the Father is unity, in the Son equality, in the Holy Spirit the harmony of unity and equality.
And these three attributes are all one because of the Father, all equal because of the Son, and all harmonious because of the Holy Spirit. –Augustine of Hippo, On Christian Doctrine, I.V.5.
The story goes that Augustine of Hippo was walking on the beach contemplating the mystery of the Trinity. Then he saw a boy in front of him who had dug a hole in the sand and was going out to the sea again and again and bringing some water to pour into the hole.
Augustine asked him, “What are you doing?” “I’m going to pour the entire ocean into this hole.” “That is impossible, the whole ocean will not fit in the hole you have made” said Augustine. The boy replied, “And you cannot fit the Trinity in your tiny little brain.”
I accept that my tiny brain, ever so much tinier than St. Augustine’s, cannot possibly absorb or explain the Trinity–I will not try to put the entire ocean in that small hole. The many analogies used to help human understanding of the Trinity are dangerously limited in scope:
three candles, one light
vapor, water, ice
shell, yolk, albumin
height, width, depth
apple peel, flesh, core
past, present, future.
It is sufficient for me to know, as expressed by the 19th century Anglican pastor J.C. Ryle: It was the whole Trinity, which at the beginning of creation said, “Let us make man”. It was the whole Trinity again, which at the beginning of the Gospel seemed to say, “Let us save man”.
All one, equal, harmonious, unchangeable, bound together to save us from ourselves.
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When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. Acts 2: 1-4
Today we feel the wind beneath our wings Today the hidden fountain flows and plays Today the church draws breath at last and sings As every flame becomes a Tongue of praise. This is the feast of fire, air, and water Poured out and breathed and kindled into earth. The earth herself awakens to her maker And is translated out of death to birth. The right words come today in their right order And every word spells freedom and release Today the gospel crosses every border All tongues are loosened by the Prince of Peace Today the lost are found in His translation. Whose mother tongue is Love in every nation. ~Malcolm Guite “Pentecost” from Sounding the Seasons
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. ~Mechtild of Magdeburg 1207-1297 “Effortlessly” trans. Jane Hirshfield
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older the world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated Of dead and living. Not the intense moment Isolated, with no before and after, But a lifetime burning in every moment
Love is most nearly itself When here and now cease to matter. ~T.S. Eliot from “East Coker”
When we feel we are without hope, when faith feels frail, when love seems distant, if we feel abandoned… we wait, stilled, for the moment we are lit afire~
when the Living God is seen, heard, named, loved, known, forever burning in our hearts in this moment and for a lifetime.
As we are consumed, carried as His breath and words into multicolor clouds to the ends of the earth, here and now ceases to matter.
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Sometimes I feel discouraged and think my work’s in vain, but then the holy spirit revives my soul again. ~ African-AmericanSpiritual “There is a Balm in Gilead”
Since my people are crushed, I am crushed; I mourn, and horror grips me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people? Jeremiah 8:21-22
We never have tried harvesting any of the cottonwood resin, but I’ve found the presence of this grand tree in the field seems balm enough when I find myself discouraged. The tall tree adapts so dramatically over the course of the seasons, remaining a fixture of stability and beauty whether golden in the autumn, blowing cottony seeds in the spring, bare with snow in the winter or flourishing with summer leaves. It is steadfast and reassuring.
Discouragement is so familiar to us, a constant pandemic companion, and certainly is rampant over the past week with images of war filling our screens. No tree resin is capable of fighting a virus or stopping a war but the balm of Gilead in Jeremiah has the power of the Holy Spirit, able to heal our sin sick souls.
The love of our Savior is the balm for us, the wounded. We will become whole again.
cottonwood seedscottonwood seed
This year’s Lenten theme for Barnstorming is a daily selection from songs and hymns about Christ’s profound sacrifice on our behalf.
If we remain silent about Him, the stones themselves will shout out and start to sing (Luke 19:40).
In His name, may we sing…
There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul.
Sometimes I feel discouraged and think my works in vain, but then the holy spirit revives my soul again.
There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul.
Don’t ever feel discouraged for Jesus is your friend and if you lack for knowledge he’ll ne’er refuse to lend.
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A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more. Matthew 2:18 and Jeremiah 31:15
…as you sit beneath your beautifully decorated tree, eat the rich food of celebration, and laugh with your loved ones, you must not let yourself forget the horror and violence at the beginning and end of the Christmas story. The story begins with the horrible slaughter of children and ends with the violent murder of the Son of God. The slaughter depicts how much the earth needs grace. The murder is the moment when that grace is given.
Look into that manger representing a new life and see the One who came to die. Hear the angels’ celebratory song and remember that sad death would be the only way that peace would be given. Look at your tree and remember another tree – one not decorated with shining ornaments, but stained with the blood of God.
As you celebrate, remember that the pathway to your celebration was the death of the One you celebrate, and be thankful. ~Paul Tripp
God could, had He pleased, have been incarnate in a man of iron nerves, the Stoic sort who lets no sigh escape him. Of His great humility He chose to be incarnate in a man of delicate sensibilities who wept at the grave of Lazarus and sweated blood in Gethsemane. Otherwise we should have missed the great lesson that it is by his will alone that a man is good or bad, and that feelings are not, in themselves, of any importance. We should also have missed the all-important help of knowing that He has faced all that the weakest of us face, has shared not only the strength of our nature but every weakness of it except sin. If He had been incarnate in a man of immense natural courage, that would have been for many of us almost the same as His not being incarnate at all. ― C.S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis
There is no consolation for families of those lost to death come too soon: a rogue king’s slaughter of innocents, and now so much needless death: weather, war, accidents, random shootings, COVID.
Arms ache with the emptiness of grief, beds and pillows lie cold and unused, hugs never to come again.
There is no consolation; only mourning and great weeping, sobbing that wrings dry every human cell, leaving dust behind, which is our beginning and our end.
God came to us for times such as this, born of the dust of woman and the breath of the Holy Spirit, God bent down to lie in manger dust, walk on roads of dust, die and be laid to rest as dust to conquer such evil as this that displaces masses and massacres innocents.
He became dust to be like us He began a mere speck in a womb like us
His heart beat like ours breathing each breath like ours until a fearful fallen world took His and our breath away.
He shines through the shadows of death to guide our stumbling uncertain feet.
He hears our cries as He cried too. He knows our tears as He wept too. He knows our mourning as He mourned too. He knows our dying as He died too.
God weeps as this happens.
Only God can glue together what evil has shattered. He asks us to hand Him the pieces of our broken hearts.
We will know His peace when He comes to bring us home, our tears finally dried, our cells no longer just dust, as we are glued together by the holy breath of our God forevermore.
Lully, lullay, thou little tiny child, Bye bye, lully, lullay. Thou little tiny child, Bye bye, lully, lullay.
O sisters too, how may we do For to preserve this day This poor youngling for whom we sing, “Bye bye, lully, lullay?”
Herod the king, in his raging, Chargèd he hath this day His men of might in his own sight All young children to slay.
That woe is me, poor child, for thee And ever mourn and may For thy parting neither say nor sing, “Bye bye, lully, lullay.”
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Come, Holy Spirit, bending or not bending the grasses, appearing or not above our heads in a tongue of flame, at hay harvest or when they plough in the orchards or when snow covers crippled firs… ~Czeslaw Milosz from “Veni Creator” inSelected and Last Poems
The cows munched or stirred or were still. I was at home and lonely, both in good measure. Until the sudden angel affrighted me––light effacing my feeble beam, a forest of torches, feathers of flame, sparks upflying: but the cows as before were calm, and nothing was burning, nothing but I, as that hand of fire touched my lips and scorched my tongue and pulled my voice into the ring of the dance. ~Denise Levertov from “Caedmon” inBreathing the Water
The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed.
And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs— Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “God’s Grandeur”
Today, when I feel at times without hope, as mute and dumb as cattle chewing the cud, as the bent world reels with illness, blood and violence, I remain in hiding: my faith feels frail, love seems distant.
I wait, stilled for the moment I am lit afire ~ when the Living God is seen, heard, named, loved, known forever burning in my heart deep down, brooded over by His bright wings: His dearest in this moment and for eternity.
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Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs — Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings ~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “God’s Grandeur”
It began so plainly this morning, building up over 45 minutes to a burst of burning clouds and settling back down to a mere halo on Mt. Baker’s northern shoulder.
Surely God’s grandeur cannot be more evident than when His spirit broods over us, bent and broken as we are, igniting the needed flame under us, giving us what we need when we need it.
We can go on and so, we are assured all will be well.
Spend your life trying to understand it, and you will lose your mind; but deny it and you will lose your soul. ~St. Augustine in his work “On the Trinity”
Here are two mysteries for the price of one — the plurality of persons within the unity of God, and the union of Godhead and manhood in the person of Jesus. . . . Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as is this truth of the Incarnation. ~J. L. Packer from Knowing God
The story goes that Augustine of Hippo was walking on the beach contemplating the mystery of the Trinity. Then he saw a boy in front of him who had dug a hole in the sand and was going out to the sea again and again and bringing some water to pour into the hole.
Augustine asked him, “What are you doing?” “I’m going to pour the entire ocean into this hole.” “That is impossible, the whole ocean will not fit in the hole you have made” said Augustine. The boy replied, “And you cannot fit the Trinity in your tiny little brain.”
I accept that my tiny brain, ever so much tinier than St. Augustine’s, cannot possibly absorb or explain the Trinity–I will not try to put the entire ocean in that small hole. The many analogies used to help human understanding of the Trinity are dangerously limited in scope: three candles, one light vapor, water, ice shell, yolk, albumin height, width, depth apple peel, flesh, core past, present, future.
It is sufficient for me to know, as expressed by the 19th century Anglican pastor J.C. Ryle: It was the whole Trinity, which at the beginning of creation said, “Let us make man”. It was the whole Trinity again, which at the beginning of the Gospel seemed to say, “Let us save man”.
All one, equal, harmonious, unchangeable, bound to save us from ourselves.
“It is not easy to find a name that will suitably express so great an excellence, unless it is better to speak in this way: the Trinity, one God, of whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things. Thus the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and each of these by Himself, is God, and at the same time they are all one God; and each of them by Himself is a complete substance, and yet they are all one substance.
The Father is not the Son nor the Holy Spirit; the Son is not the Father nor the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit is not the Father nor the Son: but the Father is only Father, the Son is only Son, and the Holy Spirit is only Holy Spirit.
To all three belong the same eternity, the same unchangeableness, the same majesty, the same power. In the Father is unity, in the Son equality, in the Holy Spirit the harmony of unity and equality.
And these three attributes are all one because of the Father, all equal because of the Son, and all harmonious because of the Holy Spirit.” –Augustine of Hippo, On Christian Doctrine, I.V.5.
Praise be that this thin mark, this sound Can form the word that takes on flesh To enter where no flesh can go To fill each other’s emptiness. To words and how they live between us To us and how we live between the worth
And in between the sound of words I hear your silent, sounding soul Where one abides in solitude Who keeps us one when speech shall go ~Carrie Newcomer and Parker Palmer “Two Toasts”
In the quiet of a room they sigh. In candle’s glow they live under An icon’s shadow and an unheard cry And the Truth-bearing words that thunder– Those Sacred Silences who tenderly await the soul.
They speak of His coming, not delayed, but near for etched in unknown depths, they say, the same Image of the One whose patient tear slays the heart and gives all away– In those Sacred Silences who tenderly await the soul.
Let saving truth’s grammar unbound Those lips thirsting for syllables of love To drink deep the wisdom in whose font resound Those words below of the Word above: As enveloped in great silences The soul awaits His coming. ~Anthony Lilles
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. John 1: 1-5
Somewhere between the Word in the beginning and the Word that becomes flesh and the Word that now exists in our hearts and hands, there is the sacred silence of God.
Advent is a time of quiet stillness, awaiting the Light brought by the Word; a flint is struck to our wick, the Darkness abolished in the eternal glow of His illuminating Word.
Let all mortal flesh keep silence, and with fear and trembling stand; Ponder nothing earthly minded, For with blessing is His hand, Christ our God to earth descendeth, Our full homage to demand. King of kings, Yet born of Mary, As of old earth He stood, Lord of lords, In human vesture, In the body and the blood; He will give to all the faithful. His own self for heavenly food. Rank on rank the host of heaven spreads its vanguard on the way, As Light of light descendeth from the realms of endless day, That the powers of hell may vanish as the darkness clears away. At His feet the six-winged seraph, Cherubim, With sleepless eye, Veil their faces to His presence as with ceaseless voice they cry: Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Lord Most High!
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