For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. Romans 8:24-25
Morning of buttered toast; of coffee, sweetened, with milk.
Out the window, snow-spruces step from their cobwebs. Flurry of chickadees, feeding then gone. A single cardinal stipples an empty branch— one maple leaf lifted back.
I turn my blessings like photographs into the light; over my shoulder the god of Not-Yet looks on:
Ample litany, sparing nothing I hate or love, not-yet-silenced, not-yet-fractured; not-yet-
Not-yet-not.
I move my ear a little closer to that humming figure, I ask him only to stay. ~Jane Hirshfield “Not Yet”from The Lives of the Heart.
To wait for the “not yet” is a hard sweet tension.
There is tension in knowing that something profound is happening – a vernal equinox, a brilliant sunrise, a fading sunset, a new life growing, but the transformation is not yet complete, and I’m unsure when it will be.
I am still unfinished business and so is everyone else.
In less than three weeks I will be reminded of what is yet to come. I will know the shock of the empty tomb. My heart will burn within me as more is revealed, through the simple act of bread breaking.
Waiting is never easy; it can be painful to be patient, staying alert to possibility and hope. Others won’t understand why I wait, nor do they comprehend what I could possibly be waiting for.
I’m all-ready, not-yet-finished, not-yet-not.
By waiting and by calm you shall be saved, In quiet and in trust your strength lies. ~Isaiah 30:15
This year’s Lenten theme: 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
The world hides God from us, or we hide ourselves from God, or for reasons of his own God hides himself from us, but however you account for it, he is often more conspicuous by his absence than by his presence, and his absence is much of what we labor under and are heavy laden by. Just as sacramental theology speaks of a doctrine of the Real Presence, maybe it should speak also of a doctrine of the Real Absence because absence can be sacramental, too, a door left open, a chamber of the heart kept ready and waiting. ~Frederick Buechner from Telling the Truth
…my faith has weathered in a holy way; it’s larger, gentler, especially as I have learned to bear the needs of others, to pour myself out at least a little bit like God does for me. In that offering, I’ve learned a lot about God’s quiet, ever-present nourishment. A larger, patient acceptance has come to me. I haven’t found every answer, I still ‘want’ so much more of God than I have, and yet, I also have learned to live with the holy hunger that is the groaning of God’s Spirit within me as I wait for the full coming of the Kingdom. ~Sarah Clarkson reflecting on Buechner’s quote above
For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. Romans 8:24-25
To wait is a hard sweet paradox in the Christian life. It is hard not yet having what we are promised will be coming – truly Real Absence for now. But it is sweet to have certainty it is coming because of the footprints we have seen:
He has been here among us.
Like the labor of childbirth, we groan knowing what it will take to get there, yet we are full to brimming already.
The waiting won’t be easy; it will often be painful to be patient, staying alert to possibility and hope when we are exhausted, barely able to function. Others won’t understand why we wait, nor do they comprehend what we could possibly be waiting for.
We persevere together, with patience, watching and hoping; we are a community groaning together in sweet expectation.
This year’s Lenten theme: 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
Let nothing disturb you, nothing frighten you, all things are passing.
God never changes. Patience obtains all things. Whoever has God lacks nothing. God is enough. ~The Prayer of St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)
Occasionally I have sleepless nights when the worries of my waking hours weigh heavily on my mind. Almost anything can feel more overwhelming at night, as I struggle to see clarity in the dark through my tears. Even in broad daylight, the puzzle pieces of my life may well seem scattered, making no logical pattern or sense. I can feel as random as pebbles shifting and tossed by waves on a beach.
In those helpless moments, I must remember if I have God, I lack nothing. This too shall pass. God does not change, even as I brace against the waves of life which turn me over and over, end for end, smoothing my rough edges, often leaving me somewhere new.
Patience, patience.
He is enough for now, for today, for tonight, for tomorrow, for ever.
photo by Josh Scholten
This year’s Lenten theme: 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
Let nothing trouble you, Let nothing frighten you, Everything is fleeting, God alone is unchanging, Patience can obtain everything, The one who possesses God wants for nothing: God alone suffices
It seemed necessary just then to touch base with the Lord. Shutting my eyes, I leaned into the horse. I prayed in words for a little while . . . and then language went away and I prayed in a soft high-pitched lament any human listener would’ve termed a whine. We serve a patient God. . . . ~Leif Enger from Peace Like a River
Prayer is like lying awake at night, afraid, with your head under the cover, hearing only the beating of your own heart. It is like a bird that has blundered down the flue and is caught indoors and flutters at the windowpanes. It is like standing a long time on a cold day, knocking at a shut door. ~Wendell Berry from Jayber Crow
Sometimes prayers are uttered wordlessly while clinging to the life preserver of a furry neck. Another living breathing creature serves as witness to our need to say what often our lips cannot. They listen, they care, they know a whimper is a cry of feeling lost and alone, all pain and sadness and abandonment.
A whimper gives voice to the fear that what is, might forever be, and might never change. Our God knows better.
God’s creatures understand our groanings. And so does our patient and loving Creator understand. When we touch base to say whatever needs to be said, whatever is spilling from our broken hearts, He hears us even when words fail us.
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The rising sun had crowned the hills, And added beauty to the plain; O grand and wondrous spectacle! That only nature could explain.
I stood within a leafy grove, And gazed around in blissful awe; The sky appeared one mass of blue, That seemed to spread from sea to shore.
Far as the human eye could see, Were stretched the fields of waving corn. Soft on my ear the warbling birds Were heralding the birth of morn.
While here and there a cottage quaint Seemed to repose in quiet ease Amid the trees, whose leaflets waved And fluttered in the passing breeze.
O morning hour! so dear thy joy, And how I longed for thee to last; But e’en thy fading into day Brought me an echo of the past.
‘Twas this,—how fair my life began; How pleasant was its hour of dawn; But, merging into sorrow’s day, Then beauty faded with the morn. ~Olivia Ward Bush-Banks “Morning on Shinnecock”
The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn, As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on, Afar o’er life’s turrets and vales does it roam In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home. ~Georgia Douglas Johnson from The Heart of a Woman and Other Poems
For what human ill does not dawn seem to be an alleviation? ~Thornton Wilder from The Bridge of San Luis Rey
There are some days, as I look at what tasks lie ahead, when I must fling my heart out ahead of me in the hope before the sun goes down, I might catch up and retrieve it back home to me.
I wonder if anyone else might find it first or even notices it fluttering and stuttering its way through the day.
Perhaps, once flung with the dawn, my heart will wing its way home and I’ll find it patiently waiting for me when I return, readying itself for another journey tomorrow.
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What’s incomplete in me seeks refuge in blackberry bramble and beech trees, where creatures live without dogma and water moves in patterns more ancient than philosophy. I stand still, child eavesdropping on her elders. I don’t speak the language but my body translates best it can, wakening skin and gut, summoning the long kinship we share with everything. ~Laura Grace Weldon, “Common Ground” from Blackbird
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. ~Wendell Berry “The Peace of Wild Things”
Nearly thirty months of pandemic separation and I long to share our farm with our far-flung grandchildren who live across the ocean, to watch them discover the joys and sorrows of this place we inhabit. I will tell them there is light beyond this darkness, there is refuge amid the brambles, there is kinship with what surrounds us, there is peace amid the chaos, there is a smile behind the tears, there is stillness within the noisiness, there is rescue when all seems hopeless, there is grace as the old gives way to new.
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Day and night A fragrance of hope Day and night She pleads for the lost and broken Day and night Until He comes ~Keith and Kristyn Getty
There was also a prophet, Anna, the daughter of Penuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying.Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem. Luke 2: 36-38
What’s enough? Countless times I’ve watched the sun rise like God’s tender mercy to gently lift the dark blanket from the earth, and countless more times I’ve watched the sun set in such a splendiferous farewell that it must reflect the fringe on God’s robe. I’ve seen the sky define blue and endless. I’ve watched rivers run to the sea, full as life runs to God. I’ve felt the sea roll in on the eternal note of mystery and assurance.
I’ve scratched the ears of dogs, laughed at the ballet of cats. I’ve heard the cry and gurgle of the newborn, played with children, rocked with grandmothers, learned from hundreds of teachers, some of them homeless, poor, and uneducated.
I’ve been loved and forgiven beyond all deserving, and all breath to tell of it, by family and friends and God.
I’ve been shaken, changed, and blessed a thousand times — and still — by the prophets, and by Christ. I’ve felt the touch of God, each time before I realized that’s what it was. I’ve shared in the cantankerous yet remarkable family of faith called the church. I’m conscious of being conscious and alive. And all that’s just for starters.
How much does it take to praise God? I have a couple of trips around the Milky Way past enough for that, no matter if I never receive another thing.
So I best get on with it . . . and praise God that I can. — Ted Loder from The Haunt of Grace
Unlike Anna the prophet, I tend to forget, in my ever-inward focus, I was created for worship and to give all glory to God. I was given a mouth to sing, hands to clasp, eyes to witness His wonders, profound forgiveness through day and night, night and day.
Unlike Anna who waited so long, I’m not sure I would recognize the touch of God.
May I – praying alongside others who are also flawed and broken – be a fragrance of hope, praising God that we are able to praise Him.
What greater reason is there to exist?
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…
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Contorted by wind, mere armatures for ice or snow, the trees resolve to endure for now,
they will leaf out in April. And I must be as patient as the trees— a winter resolution
I break all over again, as the cold presses its sharp blade against my throat. ~Linda Pastan “January”from The Months
A year has come to us as though out of hiding It has arrived from an unknown distance From beyond the visions of the old Everyone waited for it by the wrong roads And it is hard for us now to be sure it is here A stranger to nothing In our hiding places ~W. S. Merwin “Early January” from The Lice
January can be a rough month for most of us: the beginning-of-winter doldrums can be fierce after the hubbub of holidays. It doesn’t help the new year I hoped for is nothing like the unfamiliar road I find myself following – full of twists and turns and switchbacks, as well as being stalled at times, iced firmly in place, a stranger to myself.
So resolutions have been set aside, travel plans postponed, priorities changed; what I need most is the patience to endure, trusting things do change over time, like the seasons.
Winter will not last forever. I will, like the bare trees around me, leaf out again.
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I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning. Psalm 130: 5-6 from a Song of Ascents
Waiting is essential to the spiritual life. But waiting as a disciple of Jesus is not an empty waiting. It is a waiting with a promise in our hearts that makes already present what we are waiting for.
We wait during Advent for the birth of Jesus. We wait after Easter for the coming of the Spirit, and after the ascension of Jesus we wait for his coming again in glory.
It is this great absence that is like a presence, that compels me to address it without hope of a reply. It is a room I enter
from which someone has just gone, the vestibule for the arrival of one who has not yet come. I modernise the anachronism
of my language, but he is no more here than before. Genes and molecules have no more power to call him up than the incense of the Hebrews
at their altars. My equations fail as my words do. What resources have I other than the emptiness without him of my whole being, a vacuum he may not abhor? ~R.S. Thomas “The Absence”
To wait is hard when we know the value of the gift that awaits us. We know exactly what is in the package since we have watched it being carefully chosen, wrapped and presented to us to open.
We have seen His footprints on our landscape: in the hottest dessert, in the deepest snow, in the meadows and in the forests, in the mud and muck and mire of our lives; we know He has been here and wait for His return.
Not yet though, not quite yet. So we wait, and continue to wait.
Even more so, we wait and hope for what we do not see but know is coming, like a groaning in the labor of childbirth.
The waiting is never easy; it is painful to be patient, staying alert to possibility and hope when we are exhausted, barely able to function. Others won’t understand why we wait, nor do they comprehend what we could possibly be waiting for when it remains unseen, with only the footprints left behind to remind us.
Yet we persevere together, with patience, watching and hoping, like Mary and Joseph, like Elizabeth and Zechariah, like the shepherds, like the Magi of the east, like Simeon and Anna in the temple.
This is the meaning of Advent: we are a community groaning together in sweet anticipation and expectation of the gift of Morning to come.
photo by Josh Scholten
I pray my soul waits for the Lord My hope is in His word More than the watchman waits for dawn My soul waits for the Lord
1) Out of the depths I cry to You; From darkest places I will call. Incline Your ear to me anew, And hear my cry for mercy, Lord. Were You to count my sinful ways How could I come before Your throne? Yet full forgiveness meets my gaze – I stand redeemed by grace alone.
CHORUS I will wait for You, I will wait for You, On Your word I will rely. I will wait for You, surely wait for You Till my soul is satisfied.
2) So put Your hope in God alone, Take courage in His power to save; Completely and forever won By Christ emerging from the grave.
3) His steadfast love has made a way, And God Himself has paid the price, That all who trust in Him today Find healing in his sacrifice.
I will wait for You, I will wait for You Through the storm and through the night. I will wait for You, surely wait for You, For Your love is my delight.
Wait for the Lord, his day is near Wait for the Lord, be strong take heart Prepare the way for the Lord Make a straight path for Him The Glory of the Lord shall be revealed All the Earth will see the Lord Rejoice in the Lord always He is at Hand Joy and gladness for all who seek the Lord
This year’s Barnstorming Advent theme “… the Beginning shall remind us of the End” is taken from the final lines in T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Cultivation of Christmas Trees”
My mother, who hates thunder storms, Holds up each summer day and shakes It out suspiciously, lest swarms Of grape-dark clouds are lurking there; But when the August weather breaks And rains begin, and brittle frost Sharpens the bird-abandoned air, Her worried summer look is lost,
And I her son, though summer-born And summer-loving, none the less Am easier when the leaves are gone Too often summer days appear Emblems of perfect happiness I can’t confront: I must await A time less bold, less rich, less clear: An autumn more appropriate. ~Philip Larkin “Mother, Summer, I”
August weather has broken to clouds, sprinkles, nights with chill breezes, and leaves landing on brown ground.
This summer ended up being simply too much – an excess of everything meant to make us happy yet overwhelming and exhausting.
From endless hours of daylight, to high rising temperatures, to palettes of exuberant clouds to fruitfulness and abundant blooms.
While summer always fills a void left empty after enduring the many cold bare dark days of the rest of the year, I depend on winter days returning all too soon.
I will welcome them back, realizing how much I miss that longing for the fullness of summer.
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