(if you are viewing this via email, the website has a recording of this poem and commentary; click the title above)
Commentary
In my crawl through Luke, I got to chapter eleven today. Jesus’ disciples seem a little concerned that they might miss out on God’s blessing if they don’t have the right technique. They say to Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray, like John taught his disciples.” We sometimes concentrate on the components of “the prayer” that Jesus taught them, but the bigger point (as seen in the illustrations Jesus follows up with) seems to be, “God is good; just do it!”
(if you are viewing this via email, the website has a recording of this poem and commentary; click the title above)
Commentary
The poem above really was occasioned by my frustration that I cannot brag on my wife Susan on social media. She won’t have it. I’d get banned. Oh well, I believe a day is coming when Someone better than me will sing her praise. Good luck banning Him!
Recently, my slow reading through the New Testament has me in the last few days of Jesus’ earthly ministry. Specifically, I’m in Luke 22, where I’m observing how Jesus prepared for — and carried out — what we now call the Last Supper. One of the elements that Luke describes is Jesus’ sharing a cup of wine with his friends the Apostles and saying to them
Take this, and divide it among yourselves. For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.
Luke 22:17b-18
We see what took place at what we call the Last Supper. What will the Next Supper be like? There are hints. It seems that wine will be involved. If there’s wine, I like to imagine there may be some toasting. And in my flight of fancy, I can picture Jesus toasting us. That may sound shocking. Let me tell you why I go there….
God Brings Us To Glory
Here’s one of my favorite passages in the Bible:
In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered. Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.
Hebrews 2:10-11 NIV
Far from being ashamed to call them brothers and sisters, Jesus gave his very life to accomplish God’s goal of bringing believers to glory. Is glory a state or place where God alone shines, a state or place where humans who have been brought there merely witness God’s glory, but do not partake in it?
It may seem cheeky, maybe even blasphemous to contemplate Jesus sharing glory, praising mere mortals. But give it some thought, and I think you’ll come up with plenty of passages that point to this amazing reality. Let my hashtags bring a few to mind….
(if you are viewing this via email, the website has a recording of this poem and commentary; click the title above)
Commentary
In my crawl through Luke, I have spent several days in chapter 22. It may just be my imagination, but it seems like Luke WANTS us to slow down here, like he has put a video in slow motion.
Verse 7 caught my attention, as though it were a title page in Luke’s video: “Then came the day of unleavened bread, on which the passover had to be sacrificed.” Since I have been watching for thoughts shared by Dr. Luke and his companion the Apostle Paul, I asked myself, “Is Luke consciously comparing Jesus to the sacrificial lamb of Passover?” I knew Paul does that.
I looked up the occurrences of “sacrifice” (θυω, thuo), that Luke used in verse 6. That led me to a passage in 1 Corinthians 5 where Paul is urging his readers to guard their moral purity:
Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
1 Corinthians 5:7-8 ESV
Two things jumped out at me in the 1 Corinthians passage:
1) Luke’s friend Paul certainly thought of Jesus as the sacrificed Passover Lamb (I know that’s not news to most of my readers), and
2) There is a sense in which we are still celebrating the festival of Passover that Jesus and His disciples celebrated just before His death (“let us therefore celebrate”). That’s what prompted my poem.
So, I slow down in Luke 22. The story is still happening, monthly, weekly, daily. As long as it takes.
NOTE: I’m aware that the second-to-last line mixes pronoun case: “Him” and “they” can’t both be right here. So, do I fix it? For now I’ll let it go. Maybe there’s something to be gained by considering which case was correct!
(if you are viewing this via email, the website has a recording of this poem and commentary)
Commentary
I am woefully behind in posting poetry to this blog. I wanted to go ahead and post this one while the emotion underlying it is still fresh.
My morning routine these days includes reading through the New Testament in Greek. It’s a slow process because I’m frankly not very good at it. But that has its benefits. Mainly, I’m slowed down by the process, and my mind has more time to mull over what’s being said. Luke has occasioned a lot of mulling. His Greek has struck me as more refined and elevated than what I encountered in Matthew and Mark. Even when I can’t pin down the reasons for his careful word choice, I can see that he’s doing SOMETHING interesting, generally to develop a theme.
When I write about my routine, I refer to it as “my crawl through Luke.” It’s slow, and it often feels like I’m a baby in my understanding. At least I won’t run out of things to explore in this lifetime!
My crawl through Luke brings me to the end of chapter 18 and the beginning of chapter 19. Luke is doing SOMETHING with this juxtaposition of two stories. One happens outside Jericho, and the other happens inside Jericho. Both involve men who cannot see. I have tried to imagine what it might have been like for those two men to become friends. In this poem, Zacchaeus is talking with the unnamed blind beggar….
(if you are viewing this via email, the website has a recording of this poem and commentary)(background photo adapted from one by “ilamag” on Pixabay)
Commentary
When I try to shock myself and others out of our complacency, I usually discover that we’re well insulated.
I get the impression that the Gospel author Luke wanted to shock his readers. In story after story, he illustrates Jesus’ absolute demands on his disciples… and the disciples’ absolute compliance. The central passage may be this one:
So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.
Luke 14:33
In Luke’s account of how the disciples followed Jesus, we see that renouncing of everything. For instance, when Jesus calls Simon, James and John away from their career as fishermen, here’s how they respond
And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him.
Luke 5:11
“Everything” — that’s more than I have renounced. And that makes me uncomfortable. What also makes me uncomfortable is how quickly my mind tries to supply excuses. You know, stuff like decorum, not being a burden on others, being “wise.”
I sat on this poem wondering how I’d explain the weak understanding that it reveals. Then a friend messaged me out of the blue to thank me for being open and vulnerable. So here you go!
Understood, But Just Barely Having been a Christian from my youth, having studied theology, etc., etc., I “know” many things about Christianity. But it seems that the longer I live, the more I realize that I barely understand some of its concepts.
I talked about this with a friend, who teaches theology at the seminary level…. I confessed to him that every time I hit Hebrews 5, I flinch. This passage immediately follows the discussion of Melchizedek:
11We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand. 12In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! 13Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. 14But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.
Hebrews 5:11-14
“Elementary” Truths My friend, the theologian, pointed out that there’s infinite depth to the most simple concepts of Christianity. Admitting that I don’t understand something fully, is actually laughable. Who does?
I wrote this poem in anticipation of talking with a fellow poet. One topic I wanted to discuss with him is the vulnerability of baring your breast through revealing words. Is it insanity or inspiration?
We didn’t get to the “inspiration” part, but the “insanity” part was almost funny…. My fellow poet read me one of several poems he has written while struggling with depression. He said that people have phoned him after reading such a poem to say, “I read your poem. Are you okay?” He answers, “Thanks. I’m doing better because I wrote that poem.”
I don’t enjoy listening to people complain. I’ve noticed that other people don’t enjoy listening to me complain. Sometimes, my public complaint is answered by a public rebuke, often with an underlying, “If you were as spiritual as I am, you wouldn’t have such thoughts.”
I don’t know a good workaround. One of my jobs as a poet is to express what’s hard to express. That can include negative thoughts, and problems whose solution hasn’t appeared.
This poem is about the “end” or purpose of life, and whether or not we can achieve that purpose when our numbered days are few.
We are not Jesus Christ. But God invites us to identify with Him very, very deeply. I suppose He’s pleased for us to compare ourselves with Jesus when pondering the very little time that remains to any of us.
Jesus began His public ministry around age 30, and lived another 3 or so years. So, he began his public ministry ten-elevenths through his earthly life. Imagine all the ways Jesus could have faithfully reflected God the Father, all the healing, preaching, and loving he could have done with a few more years! But I have to assume that three was enough.
How About Me? The amount of character development and spiritual growth that I have experienced over the last three years astounds me. That’s not bragging. In fact, it seems more a sad admission of how many decades I have wasted than anything else! This development leaves me suspecting–or hoping–that God has something surprising for me to do with the time that remains in my life. How could that be? How could anything a 61-year old man (62 this summer) do that matters in Eternity?
I don’t know. He loves me deeply. He wants the best for me. As old as I am, He’s still my older brother. He says that in one of my favorite passages:
For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, “I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.
Hebrews 2:10-12
The Background Photo For several years now, my most profound thinking has happened while I was on long hikes, largely near or around White Rock Lake. The other day, I was thinking about what I have written in the poem just as my hike reached the area pictured in the background photo. I took the photo initially thinking of using it to say this:
Here’s the path That I in former days, On longer walks, Often saw And wondered ’bout.
It’s more familiar now Than what I knew When time and strength Had bound me To my former ways.
But then I wrote a better(?) poem about “The End of Life,” and needed a background photo!
I hope it’s not arrogant to say, “I like this poem.” Here’s why….
First, The Easy Stuff I like how a poem can suggest a whole story in just a few words. Who is “He” who “told the King”? I didn’t have to describe him or do any character development. “He” is a humble man with a home the King can enter.
I like how the King’s easy familiarity can be established with just a “propped up his feet” and “took a swig.”
Finally, I like how poetry enabled me to to build a story around a verse that impressed me so much: Isaiah 57:15 (see below, where that verse brings possible resolution to a vexing question).
The Spirit in Which I Wrote This (By the way, the following is a meandering rumination. As you’ll see, I don’t end where I began) Recently, I have been thinking about what effect it would have on a person if they were fully aware of God’s presence in their life. I mean, what if they could see him literally, physically walking with them in the park? Literally sitting beside them in the office? Literally sitting in the passenger seat of their car as they drive on the freeway?
I can’t help but think that it would regulate their behavior. Right? What about awareness of God’s actual, though not physical presence?
Someone wrote a book about this (at least that’s what I assume the book is about):
I’ll get around to reading Brother Lawrence’s little book sometime soon. But first, I need to think about this on my own…. So I pay attention. I watch for clues as I read or listen to the Bible.
Here was the first clue. I was listening through Isaiah, and came to this beautiful passage in Isaiah 11.
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
Isaiah 11:6-9
Isaiah describes a time when the knowledge of the Lord will regulate even the animals’ behavior. How? I can imagine human beings possessing special knowledge, intellectually understanding facts about the Lord. But animals? They are the ones whose behavior is regulated in this passage. So, I’m guessing the “knowledge” is more akin to “awareness.” Awareness of the Lord will be so thorough that even otherwise dangerous animals will not hurt or destroy.
So, this passage seems to support my theory that awareness of God’s presence would help regulate our behavior. How do we tap into that behavior-regulating awareness?
How About the Holy Spirit? Is He the Answer? Aren’t We Aware of Him? In God’s current arrangement with man, He causes the Holy Spirit to indwell every believer. Problem solved, right? No. The indwelling is no guarantee of awareness. Ask any longtime believer!
If He’s Indwelling Me, Why Doesn’t He Make Himself Known? Or Does He? Does familiarity cause us to drift in and out of awareness of the indwelling Holy Spirit? Is this just the best we can expect from an ongoing relationship? Some speak of God–including the Holy Spirit–as a “gentleman.” They might say, “He doesn’t impose on us, intrude in our thinking, but like a very quiet guest simply waits in the guest room for us to call Him to the dinner table or to the parlor for a good conversation.” In this scenario, He’s present, but we’re not aware of him, and that’s all we can expect if we don’t summon Him.
That sounds pretty passive on God’s part.
But another passage, also in Isaiah, starts to shift my thinking:
For this is what the high and exalted One says— he who lives forever, whose name is holy: “I live in a high and holy place, but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.”
Isaiah 57:15 (NIV)
It seems that this passage describes an indwelling WITH awareness. Here, the indwelt person experiences revival. It seems reasonable to guess that this revival is effective, noticeable encouragement. It’s not just God saying “Cheer up there, fella.” It’s God succeeding in cheering him up. NOTICE THIS IMPORTANT OBSERVATION: The awareness of God here is an awareness of what He has done, not an awareness that enables us to do something. It may come around to that, but awareness here is the result, not the cause. That may take a moment to sink in.
If Awareness Isn’t the Magic Key, What Is? To whom does God grant such awareness? Who does He actively encourage? To whom does He say “I’m staying in your home. I’m sharing this drink with you. Cheers!” Is it someone who puts up a little shrine to God in every room? Someone who ties a “remember God” string around his finger? Perhaps. It could happen. But it is certainly to the “contrite and lowly in spirit.” That’s who.
Why am exploring this awareness of God? It’s because I wish for God to regulate my behavior. I really do. For instance, I pray often that He’ll make me a noticeably kinder, more generous person. In this and other areas, do I start by recognizing my brokenness and my inability to change apart from His work in my heart?
Will I experience His encouraging, “YES, I will change you… I AM changing you!”?
First, I must ask, “Am I contrite and lowly in spirit?” It seems that’s where it begins.
On Christmas Eve, I sat up in the soundbooth for two services. First, there was the heavily-attended service of St. Bart’s Anglican Church. I think there were 50 kids in their Christmas Pageant. As you can imagine, there were at least that many parents and grandparents. It was lovely.
Then, an hour after St. Bart’s was done, we had Redeemer’s Candlelight Service. One person counted about 40 people…max. The service went well. It was disheartening at first. Nevertheless, our handbell choir, who had already performed in the St. Bart’s service, played beautifully in this service as well. The readers and singers and preacher all did a great job. Someone said of our small crowd, “We sang gustily.” “With gusto,” I thought. Yes. A small crowd, fully aware of their Audience, will do so.
The final line of this poem is intentionally ambiguous. First, it could serve as an excuse: given the amount of “work” we have to do, there is little time for the leisurely activity of “considering” things like flowers. Second, it could — and does — serve as an indictment: the “work” most of us really have to do is work on our own hearts, being more obedient to God. He instructs us to be reflective, but we often are not. We’re too busy to take a few hours of the week — much less a whole day — to cease from labor and gain new perspective. You see?
So, have you ever stopped to consider the lilies? Do it! Look not only at how they bloom, but how they grow, and how they prepare for new growth when the bloom is spent. Pick off a spent blossom and untwist the drying petals. Ask yourself why they twisted. Are they protecting something precious? Or is ugliness all you can see?
September 14, 2021… A friend told me today that his friend, Dr. Carisa Ash, had passed away at a young age. I didn’t know her, so I looked her up, and found this video. Carisa got it. I look forward to meeting her.
This poem comes out of struggling with what constitutes love for the Creator. Is it only fixation on signs of his return? Will we even recognize his voice then if we cannot recognize it now?
[NOTE: the following may be gobbledygook. Perhaps I’ll wake up early tomorrow morning and do major edits to the post, or even take it offline. That occasionally happens. Let’s just say for now that I’m “thinking out loud.” I’m trying to put words to something I sense more than understand]
Not Just an Expression
Nature expresses the majesty of the Creator. King David spoke of that in Psalm 19:
1 The heavens declare the glory of God; the sky displays his handiwork. 2 Day after day it speaks out; night after night it reveals his greatness. 3 There is no actual speech or word, nor is its voice literally heard. 4 Yet its voice echoes throughout the earth; its words carry to the distant horizon.
Creation and the Creator are not the same thing. That would be pantheism. HOWEVER, let me suggest that creation bears the same relationship to God as the soundwaves of speech bear to the speaker: they are his expression. When a child hears her father say, “I love you,” she doesn’t look around and say, “How curious… sound waves emanated from somewhere and landed in my ears.” If she separates the sound waves from the speaker at all, it’s only to say, “Those sound waves tell me that Daddy loves me.”
Nature expresses the majesty of our loving Father. Perhaps it would be better to say that in creating the universe, our Father spoke to us, He expressed his glory (intelligence, kindness, power, beauty, love), and creation is the “sound waves” of His voice.
Are we impressed by what He has expressed? That’s not an idle question.
“They’re Just Flowers”
Long ago and far away, I accompanied two friends on a long hike. Our path entered and followed an arroyo. At one place the walls of the arroyo were covered with tropical flowers. “How beautiful!” said one friend. I agreed. “They’re just flowers!” said the other friend. To this day, I think of that second friend’s response with pain and sadness. God’s beauty was there speaking to us in those flowers, expressing His powerful love. But the second friend was not impressed. He seemed to make no connection between creation and the Creator, between the expression — the “words” — and the Speaker. For him, it seems, Daddy wasn’t saying “I love you.” It was just flowers, random sound waves from who knows where.
As I catch up with posting my poems on this blog, here’s one that I am especially eager to get “out there.” It was written on the day that my dear friend announced that he was resigning as our senior pastor. I had known for a couple of days that this was coming. I knew it was going to be painful. I knew that my friend would have other duties on that Sunday. It was Mother’s Day. This day was not all about him. In his typical humble fashion, he carried off his duties for the morning with graciousness. Then, at the end of the service, after he had concluded by announcing his resignation, I and the other elders stood with him and his wife on the stage and prayed for them. The tears came at last — I was close enough to see. And since I know what lead up to this resignation, it was especially painful for me. Here and there, my friend made strategic errors as a senior pastor. WHO DOESN’T?! But any such errors were dwarfed by his faithfulness to God, by all he had put in motion to make our church a place where shepherding and spiritual growth really happen. Let’s just say that two years of extremely painful personal circumstances were exacerbated by the pandemic and a handful of implacable opponents who made my friend their lightning rod.
My pastor’s benediction that day was the old Anglican “Go into the world in peace….” That afternoon, I took a long walk. This poem came to mind as I walked. Here’s how I introduced it on Facebook:
This poem was the fruit of a tearful Sunday walk. It refers to real friends and real expectations. We live now in a long, painful beginning. Someday, that beginning will have reached its end, in terms of time and purpose. For now, “Go into the world in peace; have courage; hold on to what is good.”
Hope Do you see the hope? It’s real. There’s something about selflessness that reminds me: Jesus triumphed over the grave. When a brother acts like Jesus, I’m reminded of what Jesus’ actions have put in motion. “Have courage. Hold on to what is good.”
Depressed tonight, I recognize a silent battle — THE silent battle — that rages in me and friends. We occupy ourselves with any conflict at hand rather than the conflict at heart. We are intended by God’s merciful will to be fully won over in the battle to be reconciled, to be transformed into children worthy of fellowship with our Elder brother, Jesus Christ.
Jesus is the Victor. He won over sin that enslaves, weakens, and demoralizes us. He knows how we began; He also knows how we’ll end. Getting us there is His kind purpose (the Victor’s end).
So, why am I depressed? Largely because I see a problem in truly dear friends, a problem that probably afflicts me as well. They are — perhaps I am as well — occupied with silly, worthless conflicts. They are living in echo chambers that reinforce their perception that what they occupy themselves with is important. I sometimes despair of getting through to them. I don’t want to argue with them. They sometimes “like” what I write, apparently not realizing that it is completely antithetical to the trivial pursuits, the phony wars that call them forth. Some undoubtedly see me in the same sad light.
I wrote on Facebook that we need to pray for one another. God alone is able to rescue us from meaningless, hollow lives. He alone can replace depression with love, hope, and commitment.
Last night, instead of sleeping, my mind was aswirl with thoughts of trees, vines, fruitfulness, and the relationship of these to imago dei. Too often, I have stopped at noting the object (e.g., the persistent tree) without noting its purpose: fruitfulness, provision, generosity like that of the Creator.
“Be fruitful.” “He is like a tree… that yields its fruit.” “Also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”
The Internet browser fills my head with worrisome headlines. They did this! They are doing that! They, they, they. Soon, I forget to look for what He is doing.
I recently began listening to the Audible recording of Augustine’s “Confessions.” Last night, before falling to sleep, I was watching a lecture by James K.A. Smith on “Augustine Our Contemporary.” Just as I got too sleepy to watch anymore, he was talking about authenticity, and how that resonates with modern thinkers.
So, when I woke up this morning, my mind went immediately into writing this poetic response. The subject occupies a large part of my thinking. What is real in my everyday behavior, and what is fakery? By God’s grace, I believe there HAS been progress in becoming sincere, authentic, genuine. But the cost of that transformation is a clearer view of what remains untransformed.
Side Note on Pain and Pleasure in Writing Poetry
Writing poetry is a strange activity for me. My recall of language is spotty. In fact, it would be rare for me to be able to quote even one of my own poems. I look back on them and wonder, “How did that come out of my feeble mind? I can’t put the words together now; how did I do it then?” Words are often just beyond reach. Simple words. It’s a little painful. Just now, I needed to look up the video I reference above, and for a few seconds, I could not think of the word “YouTube.” If this had not been a weakness of mine since youth, I’d be worried.
So, you may be able to understand why writing poetry is a special pleasure for me. It is a small triumph, a pleasure to balance the pain of a language deficit. It is very much like the pleasure I experience in reading Scripture for a worship service, or even in recording my poems. There was a period in my life (Junior High through High School) when I had a speech impediment that interfered with smooth reading and speech. To be able to pull off a reading or recitation now without major hickups is a small triumph. It’s pleasure to balance pain.
Distillation of a dream that just had me. [MORNING EDIT: Every time I wake up in the middle of the night and post something that just occurred to me, I wake up the next day and semi-regret it. My 2 am thoughts are weird(er) than usual. Perhaps Ezekiel felt that way!]
I may only have two friends old enough to understand this…. In my midnight dream, I pictured myself as what one would see through the viewfinder of an old rangefinder camera. Ideally, the photographer would twist the focusing barrel until a sharp image and its ghostly double were perfectly aligned. But in my dream, the split images remained separate—out of focus. Such is the dream of an old photographer-poet.
focusing through a rangefinder camera; not there yet
“Sigh to…” Think “Try to…” but with the frustration of someone unable to change himself. However, “Good Lord!” is said in both exasperation (lament) and hope. He IS “bringing many sons to glory.”
As mentioned in an earlier post, I have recently begun thinking about GREED, and how it relates to other sins. While close friends know that I’m a hopeful “glass one-fifth full” sort of guy, I do also acknowledge the four-fifths empty. I am a sinner saved by grace, and am never surprised to discover how utterly sinful I am (and so I’m pleased at any progress!).
This pondering of greed began as a reaction. Some who believe differently than I do accuse “my side” of hypocrisy. “We” dwell on certain sins but completely ignore others. I considered using discussion of greed as a thought experiment, frankly a trap: what if I were to promote greed, insist on equal treatment of greedy people, call for greedy pride parades? You can guess where that was going (and now it will not serve as a trap). But by God’s grace, the thought experiment got out of control.
Nounish you may think yourself. Verbose you’re meant to be.
In fullness of Imago Dei, A mystery:
Don’t you see? You speak, And so, thereby, Does HE.
And when thereby He speaks, So, thereby DOES He.
NOTES: I imagine a time — when time began — when nouns were not mere nouns. That was long before anyone thought it necessary or even logical that “actions speak louder than words.” That divorce came later.
What’s implied by the phrase “God IS love?” Indirectly, this poem explores that concept.
March 11, 2019 rumination: On Sunday, I had to do the scripture reading: John 14:8-14. One verse was difficult to read: “10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.” See that odd juxtaposition? “words I say / Father… doing his work.” Reading this, I couldn’t help but think of the odd last two stanzas of my poem. God does/works through the Son’s speaking. In verse twelve Jesus says, “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” Two verses later, Jesus promises, “You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.” The Father’s doing, Jesus’ doing, our doing all get jumbled up. And the doing is related to saying/asking in unusual ways. I HAVE NOT GOTTEN TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS.
The photograph used in the featured image (shown below, but mainly for social media) was taken by Dimitris Vetsikas, of Cyprus. He generously posted the photograph on Pixabay.
It was wet, cold, and windy at the lake today… almost as good as a hike in the mountains.
This is a poem that took its own shape as I wrote… NOT what I set out to write. In the small group materials that Dave Carr and Sten-Erik Armitage prepared for our church, they quoted Alvin Plantinga articulating this striking truth: “The chief difference between Christianity and the other theistic religions lies just here: the God of Christianity is willing to enter into and share the sufferings of his creatures, in order to redeem them and his world. Of course this doesn’t answer the question why does God permit evil? But it helps the Christian trust God as a loving father, no matter what ills befall him.” That’s a truth I need to reflect on more often and more deeply.
