A Prayer for Hospice Care

Listen to me read this prayer.

Father of mercies, Comfort of the afflicted,

Walk with us through this dark valley

As we walk our loved one home to You.

Strengthen us to bear up under the dual weights of caregiving and grief.

Receive the service we render her 

As an oblation poured out at the feet of Jesus.

Let Your compassion flow through us

In care that honors her dignity as Your child,

Made in Your image.

Make us know Your presence in our most secret hearts.

Catch our tears in Your bottle,

As we grieve what we have lost and are losing

And we anticipate the loss to come.

Give us Your Spirit of gentleness with each other

Despite nerves frayed by sorrow and fatigue.

Bless the helpers You have sent us for their kindness and care.

Let Your presence and peace settle upon our loved one too, Lord.

Grant her a painless transition to Your presence

When the tally of her days is complete.

Thank You for the hope of the resurrection

And the life of the world to come.

Mercifully hear our prayer through the name of the risen Christ our Savior.

Amen.

On Visiting the Arboretum After a Year at Home {A Poem}

On Visiting the Arboretum After a Year at Home

 

Splendiferous superfluity

Of shades and shapes

Staggered starved, sequestered senses,

As if stained glass shattered,

Shards sinking roots into soil,

Springing up in life

 

Is this how Dorothy felt,

Opening a storm-tossed

Kansas farmhouse door

Into the Technicolor world

Over the rainbow?

 

Or the Sunday morning mourners

Dropping the weight of embalming herbs,

Dropping the weight of their worries—

"Who will roll away the stone"—

Dropping the weight of their weeping—

"They have taken my Lord away"—

To run on lightened feet

Through lightening day

To the disciples—

"I have seen the Lord!"

 

Crlm, 3/28/21

Easter Lily: A Poem

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb,taking the spices they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.

Luke 24:1-3, ESV 

In unseen Saturday silence

Petals unfurl, 

Mute trumpets crying out 

With rolled-away stone: 

"Take hope! Take heart! 

Why do you seek the living among the dead? 

He is not here; He is risen! 

"Your trust, your toil, His promise are not vain. 

Death will be swallowed up in victory. 

This body of death, 

This broken life, 

This night of tears are not the end. 

"At last trumpet's fanfare 

Dead shall be raised, 

Dustless, 

Deathless, 

Glorious." 

White heralds soundless sound: 

"Christ has died; 

Christ is risen; 

Christ will come again." 

Hallelujah!

Tolkien, Easter, and Eucatastrophe

Once upon a time, I read the essay "On Fairy Stories,"  by the late Professor J.R.R. Tolkien (better known today as the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings).  Towards the end of the essay, he discusses "the Consolation of the Happy Ending" as "the true form of fairy-tale, and its highest function" (22).

The climax of a tragedy would be the catastrophe, the pivotal point in the story when everything falls apart for the hero.  For fairy-tale, Professor Tolkien coins a new word, "eucatastrope," for "the sudden joyous 'turn'" of events.  (The "eu-" means "good" and sounds like the word "you.")  This would describe the moment when Luke Skywalker destroys the Death Star, when the prince kisses Snow White to awaken her, when the Velveteen Rabbit discovers he has become real. In Tolkien's own work, eucatastrophe occurs when Aragorn and his army fight valiantly in the shadow of Mount Mordor though all hope for Middle Earth appears lost, and suddenly Sauron and his empire disintegrate when the Ring is destroyed.

Tolkien says that this quality is not an attempt to escape the world's sorrows.  On the other hand, he writes,

. . . it is a sudden and miraculous grace, never to be counted on to recur.  It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophy [tragic ending], of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium [good news, gospel], giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.

It is the mark of a good fairy-story. . . that however wild its events, however fantastic or terrible the adventures, it can give to child or man that hears it, when the 'turn' comes, a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given by any form of literary art (22-23, emphasis and additions mine).

If I'm understanding the professor correctly, we love and value happily-ever-after endings because they point towards the Happy Ending, the triumph of Christ over sin, death, and all the other brokenness of the world.

The Bible itself is one grand, unified, beautiful, true story as well as a collection of smaller ones.  In this overarching Genesis-to-Revelation narrative (or metanarrative), Easter is the eucatastrophe and best understood in that context.  On Good Friday, all the disciples' hopes for God's kingdom seem dashed as Jesus Messiah is dead and entombed.  The rolled-away stone and resurrection turn that despair on its head on the third day.

Easter is the great Happy Ending from which all others proceed, the eucatastrophe not only of a fairy story but of all history.  The empty tomb looks dyscatastrophe in the eye and triumphs over it.  What's more, in many ways Easter is not an end but a beginning of a new era, a new story for all who believe in the risen Christ; as Professor Tolkien writes, "there is no true end to any fairy-tale" (22).  As Paul says it, "Therefore if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come" (2 Corinthians 5:17, HCSB).

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  According to His great mercy,  He has given us a new birth into a living hope  through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Peter 1:3, HCSB).  May you walk in the reality of this joyous living hope today.

Christ is risen; the Lord is risen indeed.  Hallelujah

Wounds That Plead for Me

As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them, and said to them, “Peace to you!” But they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit. And he said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. (Luke 24:36-40).

Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? (Romans 8:33-35).

"Another reason Jesus wears his wounds [even in His resurrection body] is that when he intercedes, he may employ them as powerful advocates. When he rises up to pray for his people, he need not speak a word. He may simply lift his hands before his Father's face. He makes bare his side and points to his feet. These are the orators with which he pleads with God--these wounds."

~C. H. Spurgeon

"Crown Him with Many Crowns"

Crown Him with many crowns, the Lamb upon His throne.
Hark! How the heavenly anthem drowns all music but its own.
Awake, my soul, and sing of Him who died for thee,
And hail Him as thy matchless King through all eternity.

Crown Him the virgin’s Son, the God incarnate born,
Whose arm those crimson trophies won which now His brow adorn;
Fruit of the mystic rose, as of that rose the stem;
The root whence mercy ever flows, the Babe of Bethlehem.

Crown Him the Son of God, before the worlds began,
And ye who tread where He hath trod, crown Him the Son of Man;
Who every grief hath known that wrings the human breast,
And takes and bears them for His own, that all in Him may rest.

Crown Him the Lord of life, who triumphed over the grave,
And rose victorious in the strife for those He came to save.
His glories now we sing, who died, and rose on high,
Who died eternal life to bring, and lives that death may die.

Crown Him the Lord of peace, whose power a scepter sways
From pole to pole, that wars may cease, and all be prayer and praise.
His reign shall know no end, and round His piercèd feet
Fair flowers of paradise extend their fragrance ever sweet.

Crown Him the Lord of love, behold His hands and side,
Those wounds, yet visible above, in beauty glorified.
No angel in the sky can fully bear that sight,
But downward bends his burning eye at mysteries so bright.

Crown Him the Lord of Heaven, enthroned in worlds above,
Crown Him the King to Whom is given the wondrous name of Love.
Crown Him with many crowns, as thrones before Him fall;
Crown Him, ye kings, with many crowns, for He is King of all.

Crown Him the Lord of lords, who over all doth reign,
Who once on earth, the incarnate Word, for ransomed sinners slain,
Now lives in realms of light, where saints with angels sing
Their songs before Him day and night, their God, Redeemer, King.

Crown Him the Lord of years, the Potentate of time,
Creator of the rolling spheres, ineffably sublime.
All hail, Redeemer, hail! For Thou has died for me;
Thy praise and glory shall not fail throughout eternity.

(all text Matthew Bridges except vv. 2 and 3, which are the contribution of Godfrey Thring)

Easter Lily

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb,taking the spices they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.

Luke 24:1-3, ESV

In unseen Saturday silence

Petals unfurl, 

Mute trumpets crying out 

With rolled-away stone: 

"Take hope! Take heart! 

Why do you seek the living among the dead? 

He is not here; He is risen! 

"Your trust, your toil, the promise are not vain. 

Death will be swallowed up in victory. 

This body of death, 

This broken life, 

This night of tears are not the end. 

"At last trumpet's fanfare 

Dead shall be raised, 

Dustless, 

Deathless, 

Glorious." 

White heralds soundless sound: 

"Christ has died; 

Christ is risen; 

Christ will come again." 

Hallelujah!

"That's My King!"

This well-known sermon excerpt by the late Dr. S. M. Lockridge has not yet lost its power to capture some of the wonder and majesty of the Lord Jesus Christ, the King whom Christians celebrate this week. May the Lord bless, in this Easter season and always, your remembrance of His saving death, burial, and resurrection.

Here is a link to a transcription, if you'd rather read than (or as well as) listen:
http://www.rpmministries.org/2009/12/thats-my-king-do-you-know-him/

Palm Sunday {A Poem}

The next day the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written,

“Fear not, daughter of Zion;

behold, your king is coming,

sitting on a donkey's colt!”

John 12:13-15, ESV

In high school, just shy of the first anniversary of my conversion to trusting only in Christ for my salvation, I wrote a poem on Holy Week for a poetry project for Mrs. Best's English class. Then I put the words to music, for reasons I don't recall except that choral and piano music filled much of my life then. Yesterday, Palm Sunday for the Western church, I remembered this and thought to share it here, a virtual back-up for the family album. As far as I know, it's the earliest poem I still possess.

The music is already yellow and tearing around the edges. My faith, too, shows some wear and tear since those early days. The writing and theology (especially the third stanza) are pretty immature, but for this post I'll leave the piece be as a reminder of the incremental nature of so much of our growth in understanding Scripture, our growth in knowing God. In many areas, we don't even know what we don't know. At no point in our walk with Christ do we fully understand the fullness of revelation, but with grace we can learn more as we go. Rather than "gospel truth," please regard this (anything on this blog, for that matter) as an old snapshot of my understanding of the Passion of Christ and take only the Word of God as your authority and mine.

"Hosanna in the highest!"

The little children cried

When they the King of kings did spy

As He on donkey nighed.

They spread their garments on the road;

Palm branches did they wave.

They welcomed Him, the Lord of hosts,

And royal reception gave.

This sip He had of earth's sweet wine

Caused many a tear to fall

When He a bitter cup did drink

Beyond that garden wall.

He soon stood next to Pilate as

His people a murd'rer freed.

As for their King, they shouted,

"On us let His blood be!"

All this was but a shadow that

Before the Lamb did lie;

As people shouted blessings,

He a lonely cross did spy.

Tolkien, Easter, and Eucatastrophe

Once upon a time, I read the essay "On Fairy Stories,"  by the late Professor J.R.R. Tolkien (better known today as the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings).  Towards the end of the essay, he discusses "the Consolation of the Happy Ending" as "the true form of fairy-tale, and its highest function" (22).

The climax of a tragedy would be the catastrophe, the pivotal point in the story when everything falls apart for the hero.  For fairy-tale, Professor Tolkien coins a new word, "eucatastrope," for "the sudden joyous 'turn'" of events.  (The "eu-" means "good" and sounds like the word "you.")  This would describe the moment when Luke Skywalker destroys the Death Star, when the prince kisses Snow White to awaken her, when the Velveteen Rabbit discovers he has become real. In Tolkien's own work, eucatastrophe occurs when Aragorn and his army fight valiantly in the shadow of Mount Mordor though all hope for Middle Earth appears lost, and suddenly Sauron and his empire disintegrate when the Ring is destroyed.

Tolkien says that this quality is not an attempt to escape the world's sorrows.  On the other hand, he writes,

. . . it is a sudden and miraculous grace, never to be counted on to recur.  It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophy [tragic ending], of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium [good news, gospel], giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.

It is the mark of a good fairy-story. . . that however wild its events, however fantastic or terrible the adventures, it can give to child or man that hears it, when the 'turn' comes, a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given by any form of literary art (22-23, emphasis and additions mine).

If I'm understanding the professor correctly, we love and value happily-ever-after endings because they point towards the Happy Ending, the triumph of Christ over sin, death, and all the other brokenness of the world.

The Bible itself is one grand, unified, beautiful, true story as well as a collection of smaller ones.  In this overarching Genesis-to-Revelation narrative (or metanarrative), Easter is the eucatastrophe and best understood in that context.  On Good Friday, all the disciples' hopes for God's kingdom seem dashed as Jesus Messiah is dead and entombed.  The rolled-away stone and resurrection turn that despair on its head on the third day.

Easter is the great Happy Ending from which all others proceed, the eucatastrophe not only of a fairy story but of all history.  The empty tomb looks dyscatastrophe in the eye and triumphs over it.  What's more, in many ways Easter is not an end but a beginning of a new era, a new story for all who believe in the risen Christ; as Professor Tolkien writes, "there is no true end to any fairy-tale" (22).  As Paul says it, "Therefore if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come" (2 Corinthians 5:17, HCSB).

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  According to His great mercy,  He has given us a new birth into a living hope  through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Peter 1:3, HCSB).  May you walk in the reality of this joyous living hope today.

Christ is risen; the Lord is risen indeed.  Hallelujah!