Anchorhold

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Anchorhold: A Poem

  

Here I am, suburban anchorite:

Chronic illness my cloister,

My home my hermitage,

Caregiving my enclosure.

My bare voice sings praise alone in my cell

With the absent-present congregants in my ears.

The mockingbird leads the avian chorus;

I pass the peace to the dragonfly on perched on the other side of the glass.

I pass along the comfort I receive

From the Father of mercies.

A living stone, embedded in the temple of the Body,

Walled in, communion mediated by windows 

In my wall, on my desk, in my hand,

Attached yet excluded—

Invisible illness hiding me invisibly away

From the rest of the body—yet still part of it,

Never parted from my Head, the Beloved.

I am a suburban anchorite,

But the burdens and bricks which anchor me here

Anchor me to Christ.

Catalog of Fragile Beauties

Listen to me read this post:

Male ruby-throated hummingbird at feeder in our back garden

Male ruby-throated hummingbird at feeder in our back garden

Female ruby-throated hummingbird at our feeder

God of Waifs and Strays (A Prayer)

But first, some photos of a black and white warbler we met at Lake Tawakoni State Park last month:

Listen to me pray these words over you

For those feeling a bit left behind, lost, or rejected

O God,

Friend of the waifs and strays and ragamuffins,

Meet us today in the pain of rejection,

In the shame of neediness,

In the wounding words,

Especially those in the mouths of those called to comfort,

And those committed to heal.

Some of us bring you such a pauperly offering, but the best and only one we have:

Hearts bruised and battered

Yet still beating,

Still taking a beating,

Turned away, turned against, turned aside.

Thank You, my Rock and my Redeemer.

You never reject those who come to You in faith.

You welcome and do not shame our neediness.

When You speak wounding words,

They are the wounds of a surgeon's scalpel,

Precisely aimed at mending and restoring.

You are able to heal broken hearts.

You deal tenderly with crushed spirits and bruised souls.

You never turn away, turn against, turn aside from

Those You rescued through the blood of Your Son.

You call the worthless worthy,

The helpless, graced,

The cast off, cherished.

O God of the waifs and strays and ragamuffins,

Make the felt consolation of Your intimate companionship

As strong and sweet as a cuppa comfort.

Bring to our hearts and minds songs and verses

Best suited to the moment of need.

Open the ears of our hearts to hear your love song

Over us, the waifs and strays and ragamuffins

(But your waifs and strays and ragamuffins).

I ask this in the name of Jesus the Savior,

Who came gladly into our shabby poverty,

That He might make us princes and princesses

In the kingdom of His Father.

Amen. 

Forgiven Much {The Other Beatitudes}

 “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,
Whose sin is covered.
Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity,
And in whose spirit there is no deceit.
You are a hiding place for me;
You preserve me from trouble;
You surround me with songs of deliverance.”

Psalm 32:2-3,7 ESV

 

Christmas Lovelight

Lord of light,

Lord of love,

Who rested not content in darkless, unblemished, eternal glory

Without the people You created:

People who traded Your bright fellowship for the darkling bondage of iniquity.

In Christmastide we remember and celebrate

The mystery of infinite, omniscient, omnipotent Deity

Weaving Himself into double helix,

Pouring Himself into a single human cell

In the confines of a virgin's womb.

While no less God,

You took upon Yourself the finitude of human form,

The patience of gestation,

The trauma of birth in blood and water.

Your voice--which shatters cedars and shakes wilderness,

stripping forests bare in power and splendor--

Cried out, hungrily inhaling the oxygen You spoke into being.

You, Savior, submitted to swaddling;

In humility, You gave Yourself to be diapered, held, rocked.

You who hold up the world by the Word of Your power

Condescended to months unable to hold up Your own head,

Immortal clothed in epidermis of mortality.

And why?

For love of Your enemies,

Sinners, rebels, reprobates,

Who deserve only wrath.

You entered our world,

Into every aspect of humanity but sin,

Lived the righteous life we could not,

Died the criminal's death we deserved,

Atoned for sin,

Conquered death,

Begat us to a living hope

Through Your resurrection from the dead.

Being fully human, You were a suitable substitute for scoundrel sinners

Such as I.

Being fully God, You were a sufficient substitute for all sinners

Who call on You in faith

(Such as I),

Trusting in Your name,

Jesus,

Savior,

Anointed One.

You took up our tears that we might find joy.

You took up our mourning that we might dance.

You took up our sickness that we might be whole.

You took up our hunger that we might be satiated.

You took up our sins that we might wear the garb of Your righteousness.

You took our judgment that we might receive grace.

You laid aside the glory of Sonship that children of wrath might be adopted sons of the Most High.

You enfleshed the Old Covenant and inaugurated the New,

Implanting new hearts that beat the rhythm of Your law.

Christ, our Passover, You gave Yourself for us

As priest and sacrifice.

Grant us grace to walk in forgiven freedom

Under the bright shelter of Your love and mercy,

Peace and grace,

Loving You who first loved us

And loved us to the end.

All praise to You, King Jesus,

For coming to shatter our darkness with Your sunrise from on high.

Come soon, Lord Jesus.

Amen.

Wells and Wellsprings

"Satisfy us in the morning with your faithful love so that we may shout with joy and be glad all our days. Make us rejoice for as many days as you have humbled us, for as many years as we have seen adversity."

Psalms 90:14-15 CSB

 

"Joy being of God was a living thing, a fountain not a cistern, one of those divine things that are possessed only as they overflow and flow away, and not easily come by because it must break into human life through the hard crust of sin and contingency. Joy came now here, now there, was held and escaped" (Elizabeth Goudge, The Dean's Watch).

The Thirst

 

Are you happy? Are you walking in joy today? Given the times in which we live, that sounds ludicrous, doesn't it? How can one be happy with the world falling to pieces about our heads?

 

Yet we want to be happy, don't we? We want to walk in joy, but we grieve not only the griefs that trouble us, but the lack of happiness they cause. We bemoan another "case of the Mondays," a fight with a spouse, chronic pain, unemployment or miserable employment, cancer, prodigal children, church strife, political strife, injustice, war, rumors of war, this pandemic that seems it will never end. These are real trials, real suffering. They are near-constant reminders that this world is not as it should be. They remind us that we are fallen people in a groaning creation. We are broken and longing for healing. We sojourn through the wilderness of this life—and it is a wilderness—thirsty. Perhaps we look back to the leeks and onions and watermelons of Egypt. Perhaps we miss the miracle manna of the present moment in our all-consuming longing for the Promised Land of some future day.

 

C. S. Lewis called that longing, that thirst, sehnsucht. There are times when it is sweet in its bitterness, in the highlights of our life, in flashes of joy when gazing at a butterfly or mountain vista, in the rhythms of waves crashing on the beach in early morning when all else is quiet. There are other times when the bitterness of the longing is so great that, though we thirst, our circumstances taste like the waters of Marah, impossible to swallow apart from the cross of Christ making them sweet. In the fleeting happy moments and the hardest, still we thirst.

 

The Cisterns

 

How will we respond to this thirst? Where will we turn for happiness and satisfaction?

 

Often we look for joy in worldly goods: in a mate, a job, a family, a ministry. We search for joy in good health, friendships, financial stability, nice home, adventure, travel, good food, more food, the latest gadget, letters after our name. We look to acquisitions, appetites, and accomplishments. We look to the earthly to give us joy and satisfy the thirst of our hearts. Then we feel surprised and frustrated when the earthly doesn't satisfy. We might as well have been drinking sea water. We have been looking for contentment in C. S. Lewis's "mud pies in a slum" because we do not understand the offer of a holiday by the sea ("Weight of Glory," Weight of Glory, 25ff.).

 

What will we do then? How will we respond? Many times we assume we chose wrong. We change our job, our address, our mate, our church. We take a trip, eat a meal, dye our hair, buy a new dress, sign up for a class. And we feel surprised and frustrated again that our hearts aren't satisfied. Still we thirst. We flee from the wilderness of obedience to a green pasture in the distance and find it also to be a wilderness. Or a mirage. We feel miserable and may have compounded our sorrow by the means we took to escape it.

 

May I suggest that our frustrated thirst is a blessing? Even when life seems going well and our circumstances are in a season of happiness, still those are only wells. Cisterns, even. And leaky cisterns at that. They give water for a while and then dry out, or maybe someone blocks them, as in Old Testament times. As the Lord told the prophet Jeremiah,

"For my people have committed a double evil:

They have abandoned me,

the fountain of living water,

and dug cisterns for themselves—

cracked cisterns that cannot hold water" (Jeremiah 2:13, CSB).

If our self-rescue attempts never failed us, we might never be open and ready to redirect our search to the Fountain, the living wellspring of joy, the Lord Jesus Christ. This is why Nancy DeMossWolgemuth says anything that makes us need God is a blessing. This is why persecuted Puritan pastor Samuel Rutherford wrote, "Dry wells send us to the fountain" (Samuel Rutherford, The Loveliness of Christ,  Kindle location 517).

 

The Fountain

 

What is this fountain? Where is the wellspring of happiness? Of joy?

 

It is not a "what," but a "who." Christ Jesus alone can satisfy. He alone can quench our hearts' thirst. He alone can give joy that never fails, even in the midst of overwhelming sorrow, as He Himself said: "How happy are those who know what sorrow means for they will be given courage and comfort!" (Matthew 5:4, J. B. Phillips New Testament). He alone can give the joy in promises not yet realized, that joy in the sure and certain hope of future grace that sustains us in the thorns and thistles of the here and now. The expectation of His coming, the day when all wrongs will be made right and everything sad will come untrue, fills us with anticipatory joy even now. This is the mysterious beatitude, the sacred happiness, of the meek, the mourners, the peacemakers, the persecuted. This is the happiness which finds those who are not offended by the inscrutable ways of God. This is the joy of Habakkuk the prophet. When contemplating the imminent Babylonian invasion and relocation of Hebrew hostages to Babylon Habakkuk writes,

Though the fig tree does not bud
and there is no fruit on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
though the flocks disappear from the pen
and there are no herds in the stalls,
yet I will celebrate in the Lord;
I will rejoice in the God of my salvation!
The Lord my Lord is my strength;
he makes my feet like those of a deer
and enables me to walk on mountain heights!

For the choir director: on stringed instruments.

Habakkuk 3:17-19, CSB, emphasis mine

 

Dear heart, happiness is never truly found by those who make it their quest. Happiness is the byproduct of pursuing Christ who pursues us first and faithfully. Seek happiness, and you will not find it. Seek Jesus and holiness, and you will find them and happiness too. He brings water from a rock and makes streams flow in desert wastes, when He is the one who has led us into the desert wilderness. Our thirst and the world's frustration of it drive us to Jesus, the fountain of living water who never runs dry. Jesus never turns a thirsty soul away empty when that soul brings its thirst to Him (John 4; John 7:37-39). On the other hand,

"Focusing on one's soul—on oneself—means you lose yourself. It reminds me of the hedonic paradox: if you focus on gaining your happiness, it will constantly elude you. Only by not focusing on your own happiness can you experience the true depths of actual happiness. Similarly, the soul is lost and saved not by denying one's particularity but by laying oneself before the living God, letting his will be more important than my will, thus submitting myself to his purposes and plans. To our surprise, when this happens, we discover true life" (Kelly Kapic, You're Only Human, Kindle location 1575).

 

True happiness is the sweetness of the life of Christ the True Vine flowing into us, the branches. Even our wounds are points of contact with His vitality and joy, and that joy can withstand and coexist with profound sorrow and loss. Elisabeth Elliot has quoted Janet Erskine Stuart's words, "The one pure joy of the one who suffers is the presence of Christ." Not only is Jesus undeterred by our thirst; He is also undeterred by our suffering. People often are; even His own people turn away from our grief and pain, but He never does. He comes to the brokenhearted closer than the dearest dear one, closer than our breath and the blood in our veins, and He bandages those wounds with His pierced hands. Where Jesus is, joy is. This joy of living in union and communion with Him is a foretaste of the consummation of all things, when Isaiah's prophecy will be realized in full:

"The wilderness and the dry land will be glad; the desert will rejoice and blossom like a wildflower. It will blossom abundantly and will also rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, the splendor of Carmel and Sharon. They will see the glory of the Lord, the splendor of our God. Then the lame will leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute will sing for joy, for water will gush in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the parched ground will become a pool, and the thirsty land, springs" (Isaiah 35:1-2, 6-7a CSB).

 

The Digging

 

For Moses and the people of Israel, one time water came from the rock struck with the staff of God in Moses' hand. Once it was meant to come by Moses' words. Other times the patriarchs had to dig to find the springs (Genesis 26:19). So it is with joy: sometimes it bubbles up through the indwelling Spirit without our thought or effort because Christ was stricken for our joy; sometimes we must cry out for it with groaning; sometimes we need to dig down to it through the habits of holiness, especially the Word of God, prayer, and fellowship with our brothers and sisters in Christ. (Singing praise to Him also helps.)

The nineteenth-century English minister and orphanage head George Müller discovered this for his own life, and his words have helped multitudes of others:

            "…the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not, how much I might serve the Lord, how I might glorify the Lord; but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished. For I might seek to set the truth before the unconverted, I might seek to benefit believers, I might seek to relieve the distressed, I might in other ways seek to behave myself as it becomes a child of God in this world; and yet, not being happy in the Lord, and not being nourished and strengthened in my inner man day by day, all this might not be attended to in a right spirit" (George Müller, "Soul Nourishment First").

When we steep our dry and thirsty souls in meditation on the written Word of God and pray it back to Him, when we partake of Scripture as a sacrament of the presence of Christ, the living Word of God, the well of holy joy will spring up and our work will be overflow of His life in us, spreading life to our brothers and sisters in the body of Christ, with their joy splashing onto us as well. This is not, however, Bible reading to check off a list or prepare for a talk we're giving. This is meeting with the Triune God who loves us in the pages of His Word. This is going to the Bible as a thirsty soul finding water in a barren land. David, who kept his sheep and later ran from Saul in the wilderness of Judah, experienced this firsthand and wrote of it in the Psalms.

How precious is your steadfast love, O God!
    The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings.
They feast on the abundance of your house,
    and you give them drink from the river of your delights.
For with you is the fountain of life;
    in your light do we see light.

Psalm 36:7-9, ESV

You make known to me the path of life;
    in your presence there is fullness of joy;
    at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Psalm 16:11, ESV

Finally, this joy is also a holy joy. The digging of meeting God in Scripture and prayer, if we have really met with God at all, will transform our lives from the inside out. We who have been saved from the penalty of sin are being saved, little by little, from the power of sin, until one day we will be saved even from the presence of sin. The old hymn is right: "Trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey" ("Trust and Obey," John Henry Sammis).

 

Lord, this sounds so simple, but it's hard. We are thirsty and hurting, and we desperately long for Your joy. Forgive us for trying to quench our thirst from the leaky buckets of this world. Forgive us for forsaking You and looking for joy in the things of earth. Those dry wells have driven us to You, who give water without cost to all who come, You the only true slaking of our thirst (Isaiah 55:1ff.). We fall on our faces before You and confess that we don't deserve the fountain of living water You promise. Yet You do promise it, Father. You promise fullness of joy and that we might drink from the river of Your delights. In Your great grace, Your undeserved favor, grant us Your joy as a testimony to others of how wonderfully satisfying and beautiful You are. Teach us to learn to be happy in Jesus. Make Your Word vibrantly alive with Your presence. Let us recognize our Shepherd's voice in the Scriptures. Enable our obedience out of the overflow of His life in us. Even in the deepest sorrows, anoint us with the joy of Christ's presence. Make our faces radiant with the nuptial joy of the Bridegroom's love. Silence the shaming voices; the resistance of Satan who wants to keep us joyless and in bondage to our broken cisterns; the worry that keeps us focused on the sand instead of our Savior. In Your presence is fullness of joy. Hold us there, Lord. Hold us fast under Your wings, because of Jesus' redeeming work. Amen.

 

 

 

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The other side of the coin: Christian Lament

This is not the opposite of joy, but it can be the path to the "Joy that seekest us through pain" ("O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go" by George Matheson).

The Savior's Sympathy

"Therefore, he had to be like his brothers and sisters in every way, so that he could become a merciful and faithful high priest in matters pertaining to God, to make atonement for the sins of the people. For since he himself has suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted."

‭‭Hebrews‬ ‭2:17-18‬ ‭CSB‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

"For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin. Therefore, let us approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in time of need."

‭‭Hebrews‬ ‭4:15-16‬ ‭CSB‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

Even the best of earthly companions fail in their sympathy and react to tears with frustration or grief with platitudes and lectures. We are too often tone-deaf in our closest relationships and miss each other out of inattention, our own inner struggles, impatience, fatigue, and just plain sin. Our old self dies hard and persists in seemingly automatic patterns of reaction strengthened over years and decades of practice. Deeply ingrained neural ruts often need much grace and time before they are filled in and different trails of response are blazed in our hearts, souls, minds, and strength. Even after long years of walking with God, the habits of the new self do not completely displace the old, and we cry, "Wretched man that I am!" now while we wait for the day when we will be like Christ, for we shall truly see Him as He is.

Thanks be to God, that Day is coming. It is nearer now than when I went to sleep last night, nearer this moment than when I drank my first sip of coffee this morning. Come soon, Lord Jesus!

In the mean time, in these Shadowlands, I cling to the forgiving grace, unfailing sympathy, and kindness of our Lord. When I fail in love and place myself first, His blood is enough for that. When others fail me, I find comfort knowing He suffered too. He was misunderstood, rejected, physically abused, betrayed, exhausted, thirsty, and hungry. His family tried to stage an intervention, thinking he was mentally ill. He even knew the more ordinary rejection of the failure to listen in order to hear, instead of listening while formulating a response or not listening at all. How many times in the Gospels do we find His words falling on deaf ears and hard hearts! (Case in point: the disciples were surprised and disbelieving when He rose from the dead, even though He had told them, out loud, time and time again, that this very thing would happen.)

Charles Spurgeon elaborates on our Savior's sympathy with words in which to steep a bedraggled, overwhelmed soul:

Many men can be touched by the sorrow of another, but they are not touched with that sorrow. It is one thing to see pain but another thing to be touched with the feeling of it. Our pain, our depression, our trembling, our sensitiveness—Jesus was touched with these though he did not fall into the sin that so often comes of them. We must treasure this view of our Lord's sympathy, for it may be a great support in the hour of agony and weakness (The Spurgeon Study Bible, p. 1645, s.v. Hebrews 4:15).

Dane Ortlund's heartening book Gentle and Lowly also develops this theme eloquently, and I commend it to your notice if you have not yet read it.

Let Jesus draw you in through the loveliness of his heart. This is a heart that upbraids the impenitent with all the harshness that is appropriate, yet embraces the penitent with more openness than we are able to feel. It is a heart that walks us into the bright meadow of the felt love of God. It is a heart that drew the despised and forsaken to his feet in self-abandoning hope. It is a heart of perfect balance and proportion, never overreacting, never excusing, never lashing out. It is a heart that throbs with desire for the destitute. It is a heart that floods the suffering with the deep solace of shared solidarity in that suffering. It is a heart that is gentle and lowly. So let the heart of Jesus be something that is not only gentle toward you but lovely to you. If I may put it this way: romance the heart of Jesus. (Kindle location 1222).

Christ's heart for us means that he will be our never-failing friend no matter what friends we do or do not enjoy on earth. He offers us a friendship that gets underneath the pain of our loneliness. While that pain does not go away, its sting is made fully bearable by the far deeper friendship of Jesus. He walks with us through every moment. He knows the pain of being betrayed by a friend, but he will never betray us. He will not even so much as coolly welcome us. That is not who he is. That is not his heart (Kindle location 1493).

Recently I also found our never-failing Friend and sympathetic Savior in  "The Ruler of the Waves," a small booklet by J. C. Ryle (1816- 1900).

I find a deep mine of comfort in this thought, that Jesus is perfect Man no less than perfect God. He in whom I am told by Scripture to trust is not only a great High Priest, but a feeling High Priest. He is not only a powerful Saviour, but a sympathizing Saviour. He is not only the Son of God, mighty to save—but also the Son of man, able to feel.

Who does not know that sympathy is one of the sweetest things to us in this sinful world? It is one of the bright seasons in our dark journey here below, when we can find a person who enters into our troubles, and goes along with us in our anxieties—who can weep when we weep, and rejoice when we rejoice.

Sympathy is far better than money, and far rarer too. Thousands can give who know not what it is to feel. Sympathy has the greatest power to draw us and to open our hearts. Proper and correct counsel often falls dead and useless on a heavy heart. Cold advice often makes us shut up, shrink, and withdraw into ourselves, when tendered in the day of trouble. But genuine sympathy in such a day will call out all our better feelings, if we have any, and obtain an influence over us when nothing else can. Give me the friend who, though poor in gold and silver, has always ready a sympathizing heart.

Our God knows all this well. He knows the very secrets of man's heart. He knows the ways by which that heart is most easily approached, and the springs by which that heart is most readily moved. He has wisely provided that the Saviour of the Gospel should be feeling as well as mighty. He has given us one who has not only a strong hand to pluck us as brands from the burning, but a sympathizing heart on which the labouring and heavy-laden may find rest….

Had my Saviour been God only, I might perhaps have trusted Him, but I never could have come near to Him without fear. Had my Saviour been Man only, I might have loved Him, but I never could have felt sure that He was able to take away my sins. But, blessed be God, my Saviour is God as well as Man, and Man as well as God—God, and so able to deliver me—Man, and so able to feel with me. Almighty power and deepest sympathy are met together in one glorious person, Jesus Christ, my Lord. Surely a believer in Christ has a strong consolation. He may well trust, and not be afraid" (J. C. Ryle, The Ruler of the Waves).

Are you hurting? Misunderstood? Bullied? Lonely? Rejected? Overwhelmed? Afraid? Exhausted? Forgotten? Alienated? Anxious? Downcast? Grieved by your failures to love, trust, and obey?

Go to your merciful and sympathetic High Priest. He knows. He sees. He understands. He loves. We fail each other, but He will never fail us in His compassion and concern. He who dwells in you, if you are His, cannot but feel your sorrows with you. In all our afflictions, He is afflicted. He may leave us in the dark. He may leave us in the fire. He may leave us in the storm. But He will never leave us.

Courage, dear hearts!

At the Threshold of the Year

 A Reflection on the Year 2021

Sunset at home, 12/31/2021

Unchanging, everlasting God—

El Olam—

Here I kneel

(In spirit though unable in body)

At the threshold between

This year and the next.

Lord, my heart still stings,

Raw from the many griefs of this hard year,

The dreams dashed,

The hopes deferred,

The tears wept,

The trials endured,

The promises broken,

The trust betrayed,

The upheaval wreaking havoc

And revealing where my true trust lies,

The beloved ones lost,

The beloved ones being lost.

(Not on my shoulders,

But in Your hands.)

 

I praise You, Lord,

That hope in You is never deferred.

Your promises always come true,

In every jot and tittle,

No word falling to the ground unfulfilled.

You gave Isaac to Abraham against all odds,

At the exact time You had said.

You brought forth Israel’s deliverer Moses

In the very year promised to

The patriarch generations and centuries before

The heel-snatching twin and

The prime minister of Egypt

Were even twinkles in their fathers’ eyes.

You sent Your people into Babylonian exile,

Then opened the path for their return,

According to the seventy years

Predicted by the prophet Jeremiah

And claimed in prayer by the prophet Daniel.

Messiah was cut off—

Hung on a cross,

Pierced with nails and spear,

Buried in a rich man’s tomb—

In the precise way

At the precise kairos hour

You foretold through Your faithful

Isaiah, David, and Daniel.

He, Messiah, rose on the third day,

Just as He promised His disciples

And according to the sign of Jonah.

You poured out Your Spirit on Your children

At Pentecost, the Feast of Weeks,

An outpouring Joel had prophesied

And Jesus had promised.

 

You place Your bow in the clouds today,

Again and again the rainbow,

Noah’s sign in the skies,

That storm and flood may

Rage and thunder, but never again

Will they prove the end of us

And of this beautiful, terrible planet we love so.

Heaven and earth will flee away in Your appointed time,

But not through the agency of

Himalayan-drowning, Rocky-gouging floods.

Rescue will again come,

But not through an ark of wood to carry

Families of men and animals over the waves.

Rescue will come and has come,

Through the Lamb Jesus slain on a cross of wood,

To bear the sin of those who trust Him

And give to them His righteousness,

And the priceless pearl of

Adoption as sons and daughters of God.

 

We have Your Word

(And You cannot lie),

Your covenant oath,

Your history of impossible promises fulfilled;

We have the daily signs of

Morning and evening, assuring us

Of Your unfailing steadfast love,

And Your interminable, limitless mercies.

Great is Your faithfulness!

 

Even in all the wounds and brokenness

This year has wrought, like

Floodwaters carving up our own stony hearts,

Forbid it, Lord, that I should fail

To recognize Your gracious consolations.

You were in the desolations,

Though I perceived You not,

And You were in the consolations,

The sweet blessings that strengthened weak hands

And made firm feeble knees.

Thank You, Promise Keeper, Almighty God,

For Your presence in all our tribulations,

For Your Word in every need,

For every drop of anguish that amplifies our need of You;

For the lives spared,

For the service You enabled,

For the hours of hymns sung through masks to a dying woman,

For the yarn crafted into comfort, love, and help;

For unearthing happy memories,

For times spent in Your glorious creation,

For open doors of opportunities;

For reunion with loved ones after months of separation,

For sisters biological and spiritual,

For Your servants newly consecrated with laying on of hands

And prayer,

For technology bringing distant teaching, worship, and celebration

To my kitchen and my comfortable chair;

For unexpected, miniscule health progress,

For clear cancer scans,

For milestone celebrations;

For the miracle of monarch metamorphosis

Observed in all its stages,

Your profuse, offhand wonder

Passing unnoticed myriad times a day until

The serendipity of scrutiny from

A vantage point of inches.

“Lord of all, to Thee we raise

This our joyful hymn of praise.”

 

These happy eucharisteos also

We lay upon Your altar;

This weight of blessing,

As much as the weight of sorrow,

We roll into Your strong, pierced hands.

For the glad things and the sad things,

We love You, trust You, praise You.

(Not on my shoulders,

But in Your hands.)

Bandage our wounds

And revive our hearts with

Hope and joy from You for the year ahead.

You have gone before us

And will meet us there,

For Jesus’ sake.

 

Amen.

 

12-31-21

In Praise of Our Great High Priest

(From Hebrews and John 17-19)

Lord Jesus,

We praise You today as our Great High Priest.

Unlike the Old Testament priests who offered the blood of bulls and goats and calves that could only cover, not take away, sin,

You offered Yourself—
both priest and sacrifice.

You are our merciful and faithful high priest
and our perfect Passover lamb.

You poured out Your own lifeblood on the cross
and declared, “It is finished.” Perfected. Completed.

You drank to the last drop the cup of wrath that we might drink the cup of blessing and redemption.

You bore our sins that we might wear Your righteousness.

You were forsaken, that those who trust You may never be.

On the third day You rose again, like the priests of old emerging from the tabernacle on the Day of Atonement, living proof that Your sacrifice was accepted and our debt paid in full.

For forty days You kept company with Your disciples, teaching them and revealing Yourself to them in all the Scriptures that had come before.

After that, You ascended in Your resurrection body
to the heavenly realms, where You sit now,
“at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty on high.” 

You are still our high priest,
interceding for us with grace, mercy, and sympathy,
having experienced for Yourself every sort of trial and temptation we face. 

You are our good and gentle High Priest.
Lord Jesus, we approach the throne of grace with bold assurance
because of Your priestly work on our behalf.
Give each one of us the mercy and help he or she needs.
Grant us grace to hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering,
for He who promised is faithful.
Fill us today with fresh awe and wonder as we behold Your suffering
in this Your Word,
for Your glory, our good, and the growth of Your church. 

Amen.