It was a cunning disguise.
You’d have won a fancy dress competition.
Who would have thought
to look for God
in the womb of an unmarried teenager
in the barn belonging to a pub?
in a crying baby?
in poor people far from their simple home
hounded by bureaucracy?
in a child who would soon be ‘wanted’?
who would soon be a refugee?
Who would have thought to find God later
in an immigrant?
in a backward fishing village?
in a carpenter’s workshop?
Well yes – in his celebrity status
performing miracles and healings…..
I would expect to find God there….
but then
to find God
on a cross
alongside two thieves
and convicted of blasphemy?
Who would have thought
That God would be found now
Here, in you, in me.
Do you wince thinking ‘only on my better days?’
No friend, He is in you even now -
This treasure likes to live in broken pots
That His glory may be seen through the cracks.
That His presence delights to be with me
Is a wonderful mystery born of love
God with us
Emmanual
As we entered the year, few were aware of the cloud over China
The size of a mans fist
That would grow to encompass the planet
Dripping disease, spreading fear and anxiety
Locking down the frenetic world
Till all was still
We hunkered in homes
Disconnected with all that went before
Isolated
from each other
Counting the death toll.
The pundits quick to criticise
All that was done
But having no answers of their own.
Much that had meaning was shed
as shops shut, workplaces closed
We stopped our rounds of visits.
It was time to stop.
***
How swiftly life reduced
To four walls.
And I was challenged
By my inner sparseness
Stripped of activity
Faced only with news
Of disease and death,
It was time to clean the clogged fountain
And let the spring rise up anew.
This small cave grew and expanded
Simple beauty pervades my heart
Inspired by creation
Through which I stroll
The light of God my source
In this darkness.
These burdens too heavy
I pass them to my King
Who bears all things
And gives me life
How sweet His name.
And now I furnish His house
My heart
With good things
With beauty
Forests of peace
Lakes of kindness
Mountains of faithfulness
Waterfalls of joy
Good fruits
Pathways of self control
The scent of patience on the calm sea
I walk across the gardens of gentleness
And relish the landscape of love
How can my life be called constrained
When this richness is in You Lord
Within me.
Your song drowns out
the clamouring circumstances
Glory outweighs suffering
This outward world so quickly shrank
But the inner world expands
For all time
Until one day, we will see you clearly
Walking over the waves towards us
To greet us in a holy embrace.
What!?? Two posts in as many days!! What’s THAT about then?
The thing is, yesterday, a wave of HOPE washed over me, just as I was was driving along. I've written about it:
Yesterday, an illogical wave of Hope swept over me.
It felt so good.
Even amidst the global crisis I was reminded that there is Hope.
Jesus himself walked with us in our darkest times.
He lay, emaciated in Bergen-Belsen
He crouched in the Anderson shelter hearing the bombs whining and crashing.
He waded into the water at Hiroshima, in skies red and black.
He fled the great fire of London.
He sat on dusty plains of Africa's famines
and cried in Romania's orphanages
He heard the cries 'bring out your dead' as plague stalked the land.
He was a refugee, fleeing murderous threats.
Oppressed, like honest men under communist rule.
Rounded up, like the Jews. Did I mention he was Jewish?
He was the object of lies, and mockery, falsely arrested.
Betrayed and tortured and murdered,
like monks as their monasteries were pulled down around their ears.
He walks through hospital wards and sits by hospice beds
And rules from a throne, highly exalted.
He is alive. He is hope. In our midst. Personified.
His cry of 'HOPE' can be a whisper deep inside, almost unbelievable. Almost.
Or HOPE can be a cry from Heaven, echoing across the land
Bouncing off mountains and oceans alike.
Coming from an empty tomb in Israel.
It is a sure thing.
Hope. Hope. HOPE.
The bible tells us He, Himself is our Peace That His wonderful illogical peace will guard our hearts and minds in Christ.
When I google ‘peace’, it takes me to pictures of still lakes, tranquil sunsets and gentle doves. Or peace demonstrations, CND emblems, as if peace can be imposed by marching and shouting for it.
But Peace cannot be demanded. Nor is it just in stillness.
The peace of most value is the peace Jesus brings, when he says ‘Peace be with you’ – his ofttimes greeting.
This peace is a gift, a promise. Best of all, it offers its company not just in stillness and beauty but in ferocious times of trial and testing.
The hand of Christ needs to rise up and cry ‘Peace’ If it stilled the storms of life that would be good. But even better when it stills inners storms of heart and mind.
I love the progression of Psalm 27. So often, it is quoted just from verse 4 ‘One thing I desire . . .’ but this loses the powerful context.
In verse 2, enemies are attacking David by the beginning of verse 3, the city is under siege by the end of verse 3, war has arisen.
David’s response to all of this is to dwell in God’s house, to gaze upon God. to declare the ‘one thing’ that is needed – to seek God. To offer sacrifices with shouts of joy. To worship. This is His source – the Presence of God.
Now we truly see why, in verse 1, God is his light, his salvation and the reason he is unafraid.
True peace is the peace that is found from within, during the storm.
It is interesting that the ‘eye’ of a storm is the wildest, most dangerous place to be, if at sea. Waves from all directions, at extremes heights, collide in chaos. Yet, if you are on land, even though winds swirl around it at enormous speeds, the eye of the storm itself is a place of utter stillness. Of peace.
We need to be on the rock. Grounded in Christ with our eyes fixed on Him. Then no matter what storms rage around us, our inner peace can be maintained by Him.
How easy it is to know the theory, yet to find this peace can be so difficult. Vincent Van Gough famously said ‘there is peace even in the storm’, yet tragically took his own life. We need to know it, not just know about it.
When and where is there joy?
When He holds the most important place
the Highest place
the innermost throne
of my heart
and in my life.
He loves to dwell in the inner sanctuary
that too often he occupies alone
whilst waiting for me.
In that place is
Gold
A River
Laughter
Rest
Beauty
Tears
Vastness
Passion
A different experience each day.
Truth
Conviction
Grace
New beginnings
Gifts
Revelation
Adventure
Love poems
Encounters
and so it goes on…
I could write a Thesaurus and it would never say enough.
For the words of what is found in that place
march off the page to eternity.
My fickle heart - you have an enemy who shakes to see you go there.
Not merely to pass through paying lip service to my King
But to sit. To gaze. To dwell.
Therein my joy. My love. My heart.
This is the world you hold in your hands.
Not one jot
one iota
of suffering goes unseen.
You wince as a sparrow falls to ground
so how could our suffering leave you unmoved?
This wonderful world
made for your children
Each ploughed field nurtures and blooms with life
sustained by mud, sun and rain
life-giving elements freely given.
Growth is in your being O God,
whose depths cannot be plummeted.
Yet even as you fling
the ever expanding universe into space
You regard, lovingly, the palms of your hands
engraved with our names.
Each of our faces before you.
Lives known.
Our souls are seen.
And loved.
An empty cross our proof
of your infinite care.
Our bottled tears
kept safe
until the day
when no tear more will fall.
For we will see you.
Face to face.
Earths cares forgotten
in the light of eternity.
“Walk with me”
The words to your friends in Eden’s cool evening
tumble through history.
Enoch, walk with meNoah, walk with me whilst I explain carpentry and rainWalk with me, Israel, through parted seas and barren desert.I'll walk you to the promised land though you wriggle to escape my hand.
Even as they feasted on milk and honey,
they strayed.
So far that none could hear your voice.
So you yourself came
Looked us in the eye and bid, ‘walk with me’
And we followed and walked from Galilee to Jerusalem and back
many times,
walking and talking.
You were our friend, walking with us.
Your crown was hid, and when your plan was revealed
and disguise cast away
You merely asked us ‘pray with me’
yet we slept,
and on waking, we fled.
Death could not hold you.
Alive and risen you took again to the road
with ordinary people.
‘May I walk with you?’
And you walked and talked
explaining the plan,
only leaving when light had dawned upon our dull brains
that this was you and you were alive.
Despair dethroned by Hope.
Here we stand
Urged by ancestors to walk with you
A cloud of witnesses watching our steps
until we will come
to the city where no one shall say to another ‘know the Lord’ for all shall know You.
All shall walk with You
in a place beyond time itself.
But for now, as gravity pins me to earth
I hear the call of love
the call to friendship
You almost sound lonely, and certainly yearning:
“Walk with me”.
Why did the Holy One… All seeing. All knowing. Perfect in wisdom.
Supposedly!
See fit to encase my free and dancing spirit within this lumbering carcass?
That creeps, and crawls, and trudges with rhythmical torpidity;
That takes an eternity to get the shortest distance.
A twig across my path seems like a Giant Redwood
A stone like Butser Hill
A puddle like Heath Lake.
Even the busy wood louse scuttles past like an Olympic sprinter
With a cheery “Morning, slowcoach! Nice day!” as he leaves me trailing in his wake.
Why did the Creator choose to incarcerate me in this now fat and ever more wrinkled body?
That crawls inch by painful inch across the damp earth
Up the brown plant stem
All to reach the life sustaining leaf –
My daily bread, my nourishment that nourishes me less and less
As this geriatric body stiffens and crumbles, and finally gives up the ghost.
Why?
What is it all for?
I have never doubted how loved I am.
His love throbs and pulses through every cell of my body.
His delight in me;
His tender care;
His passion, and compassion, for me, even me
Surely the slowest and least important of His creatures.
And yet, His purpose in creating me remains a mystery -
At least to me.
Soon I shall breathe my last, and die.
Die, knowing I am so loved;
But die without knowing my deeper purpose.
If only I could know.
If only I had even some faint inkling of why He made me like this.
Ah well.
He knows.
That has to be sufficient.
He gives, and He takes away.
Blessed be His Holy Name.
The Word saw, and He smiled.
As creation was unfolding on that seismic fifth day;
All of heaven gasping with wonder and delight
As each new creature burst into life upon the Virgin Earth.
Each one revealing something of the Divine Mystery,
Divine Wisdom; Divine Glory;
The elephant’s strength; the gazelle’s grace;
The eagle’s pinioned, breathtaking beauty in flight;
Each one a mirror, a reflection, of one small part of the Holy One.
Then heaven paused; intrigued.
The humble caterpillar appeared;
Brought into being by a word from The Word.
“Now what reflection is this?” whispers one to another.
“What part of Him does this slow and tiny creature reveal?”
And now, Heaven sees, the caterpillar - having lived so briefly,
Stops, dies, and is encased in a funeral shroud of its own body.
The Word saw, and He smiled.
There are no mistakes.
All are so loved; so precious; so cherished.
All reveal something of His Divine Nature.
“Arise, my love,” whispers The Word.
Heaven holds its breath.
A tremor of movement in the dead pupa.
A flash of colour.
We came across two trees intertwined. One was old with peeling bark, the other younger smoother and vibrant. They were mutually supportive and reminded us of the Living Word – Old and New Testaments.
Neither of the Testaments stand alone. The Old points us to the New and the New is the fulfilment of the Old. Both grow in the same direction and teach us about God – His ways and His person.
Both were alive, producing dense foliage. The leaves that suck the unwanted things from the air and breathe out oxygen. His Word is alive.
Thus ended our walk. I love the way God is so present in all of His creation.
