Tag: tender mercies

Awaiting His Arrival: From Silence to Time Suspended

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 Immediately his (Zechariah’s) mouth was opened and his tongue set free,
and he began to speak, praising God:
…because of the tender mercy of our God,
by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven
to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the path of peace.
~Luke 1: 64, 78-79

 

Upon the darkish, thin, half-broken ice
There seemed to lie a barrel-sized, heart-shaped snowball,
Frozen hard, its white
identical with the untrodden white
of the lake shore. Closer, its somber face—
Mask and beak—came clear, the neck’s
Long cylinder, and the splayed feet, balanced,
Weary, immobile. Black water traced, behind it,
An abandoned gesture. Soft in still air, snowflakes
Fell and fell. Silence
Deepened, deepened. The short day
Suspended itself, endless.
~Denise Levertov “Swan in Falling Snow”

And we are silenced too by our questioning the motives of God, by trying to be God ourselves, and so sit suspended, immobile, in the darkening quiet, waiting, waiting.
We are met by the tender mercy of His light illuminating our deepening, raised to the eternal, suspended, forgiven endlessly.

 

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Advent Sings: Be Like the Sun When It Rises

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Mt. Baker at Sunrise
Mt. Baker at Sunrise

So may all your enemies perish, O Lord!
But may they who love you be like the sun
when it rises in its strength.
Judges 5:31 from the Song of Deborah

As Deborah sings in exuberance over her God-led victory, the people of God want to model the strength seen in the rising sun: constancy, resiliency, intensity.  Yet the metaphor of the sun rising is not only about us.  God’s emergence on earth reflects the light of his tender mercies, dispelling the shadows for those living in darkness.  As sung by Zechariah after the birth of his son John who will lead the way for Jesus’ light:

because of the tender mercy of our God,
by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven
to shine on those living in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the path of peace.”
Luke 1: 78-79 from the Song of Zechariah

As Deborah’s and Zechariah’s songs point us to the light brought by Jesus into a dark and dismal world, we see the same powerful metaphor emerging as early as Balaam’s prophecy in Numbers and later in Psalms:

I see him, but not now;
I behold him, but not near.
A star will come out of Jacob;
a scepter will rise out of Israel.
Numbers 24:17

For the LORD God is a sun and shield
Psalm 84:11

Most hopeful of all is the following passage from Malachi.   The “tender mercies” of Zechariah and the “healing rays” of Malachi bring us immense comfort and joy in our anticipation of the birth of Jesus and his return for us on the path of peace.  It has been much too long since we felt like frolicking.  Now is the time.

But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays. And you will go out and frolic like well-fed calves.
Malachi 4:2

Buffalo-calf

Beneath the Veil

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photo by Josh Scholten

The wild November come at last
Beneath a veil of rain;
The night winds blows its folds aside,
Her face is full of pain.
The latest of her race, she takes
The Autumn’s vacant throne:
She has but one short moon to live,
And she must live alone.
~Richard Henry Stoddard

 

November is here,
having swept in on floods and wind,
leaving a mess of sorrow and silt in its wake.
There is much to be thankful for
despite the powerlessness,
pain of loss and effort of recovery.
November is a reminder
of our fragility and need for shelter
from the storms of life.

Blown off course,
drenched to the marrow,
pining for the light lost
to the advancing calendar,
we hunker down in place,
burrowing in for the long dark winter.

It is coming,
this veil of tears.
It is coming,
these night winds blowing away
our shield and protection.
It is coming,
this new moon forgetting how to shine.

Even so.
Our light still is powered from within,
ignited and irrepressible,
fueled by an overflowing abundance
of gentle loving and tender mercies.