Shine {A Poem}

Induct me, Lord, into the fellowship of shining faces,

The kinship of the radiant, kintsugi saints

With your gold gleaming through the fractures of

Their souls. Shine Your bright righteousness on me.

Count me among the meek who gaze so long 

And earnestly at Jesus' glorious face

In ink and paper, pixels, glass, and light,

Who speak and listen to Your voice along

The steep and cobbled winding path of life

To such extent, Your Spirit kindles inner flame

Your light, not ours,

Absorbed, reflected back

From unveiled hearts, shines forth to watching world.

But first, we need to see. Open blind eyes.

Transfix us and transform us with Your grace.

In Jesus' name we seek Your face. Amen.

 

~crlm, 1/14/21

O Thou Who Art My Quietness

O Thou who art my quietness, my deep repose,

My rest from strife of tongues, my holy hill,

Fair is Thy pavilion, where I hold me still.

Back let them fall from me, my clamorous foes,

Confusions multiplied;

From crowding things of sense I flee, and in Thee hide.

Until this tyranny be overpast

Thy hand will hold me fast;

What though the tumult of the storm increase,

Grant to Thy servant strength, O Lord, and bless with peace.

~Amy Carmichael, Rose From Brier

"What He has done is the best, because He has done it, and I pray that as a family we may not cast about for explanations fo the mystery, but exult in the Holy Spirit, and say, 'I thank Thee, Father . . . . Even so, Father.' It suggests a lack of confidence in Him if we find it necessary to try to understand all He does."

~Rev. Frank Houghton, regarding the young death of his sister on the cusp of her long-desired missionary career (Ibid.)

Amaryllis {A Poem}

.

The blooms keep re-enchanting my imagination

As they unfurl petals like the woman of chayil

Facing the future and all its dire prognostications

With hands outstretched and kindness on her tongue.

They bloom so bravely in the window there,

Rose and white streaked satin petals,

Crimpèd edges, curling back like unclenched fists,

Their hearts of streaky green and apple seeds

Laid bare before a world that deals not often kindly

With bare hearts. Before their valiant candor

My own armored, fainting heart beholds its poverty

And sighs.

Reverse Costco Effect

“For we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you. Indeed, everything is for your benefit so that, as grace extends through more and more people, it may cause thanksgiving to increase to the glory of God.  Therefore we do not give up. Even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day. For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory.  So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

2 Corinthians 4:14‭-‬18 CSB

 

Years ago,

When I was able to (gasp) 

Go to a store,

Load up a cart,

Unload it into my car,

Move the bags and boxes into the house,

All by myself,

 

In that time so different from my present,

An odd thing occurred

Enough times

That it earned itself a name.

 

In the vast chasm of a warehouse,

I would add to my cart some throw pillows,

A doormat perhaps,

A box of frozen chipotle black bean burgers.

Among the lofty rafters

Where a helium balloon would be lost forever,

Among the aisles long enough to cheer

Any fitness tracker,

The things in my cart seemed perfectly Goldilocks in size,

Just right.

 

Somewhere between the store and home—

Did I pass through a magic portal?—

Those perfectly normal items transmogrified.

When I brought them inside,

They were too big for the sofa,

The freezer,

The front porch.

 

How had this happened?

We finally concluded

Context was key.

The warehouse dwarfed the purchases,

Making them seem smaller than they were.

Our home shrank the context

And expanded our perception of size.

An elephant overwhelms a powder room

But finds room to roam on an African savannah.

This phenomenon we dubbed

“The Costco Effect.”

 

These last few months,

One idea I’ve been preaching to myself,

Overwriting the false story with the True,

Is that the Bible presents a reverse Costco Effect

Regarding our sufferings.

 

The sorrows which seem,

And indeed are,

So great and overwhelming

In this tiny house,

One-person tent

Of a life,

Can truly be called “light and momentary”

By the apostle Paul

(Who had endured more than I)

Because he had seen them in the third heaven,

The vast landscape of eternity,

That indescribable,

Incomparable weight of glory.

 

“Therefore we do not lose heart,”

He wrote,

Because in the pages of our Bibles

We can see that invisible vista.

We can behold in words,

Through a glass darkly,

The shadowy pictures of how great,

Magnificent,

Hyperbolic

The kingdom of heaven will be.

 

When we behold that reality

With resurrected eyes,

Walk the golden streets

With resurrected feet

And ankles that don’t need braces,

Sing praises with resurrected voices

That stay in tune

And don’t crack on E-flat—

 

When we trade our mourning for joy

In the presence of the Lamb

Our Savior—

 

Is it just possible,

That when we see the splendid sequoias

Sprung from the very seeds of our sorrows,

That we will fall on our faces

And regret

(If regret were possible)

That we had not suffered more?

 

Is it just possible

That the unbearable burdens

We struggle even to roll off our backs

Onto His

In this annus mirabilis

Will seem miniscule when

Dwarfed by their proper context?

 

Is it just possible

That gazing at that possibility

With eyes of faith

Until we can gaze

With eyes of flesh,

Will make firm our weak hands

And make strong our feeble knees

Even now,

So we can rise again when morning dawns

And keep treading

In the footsteps of our Savior?

 

This hope rooted in promise,

Anchored in truth,

Keeps me fighting for joy.

No tear will be lost,

No sorrow wasted,

But all are producing for us

An exceeding and eternal

Weight of glory

Beyond our best imaginings.

Unprecedented {A Poem}

 

Worlds, stars, atoms, galaxies,

Spoken into being—

                Unprecedented.

Roses, bluebonnets, honeysuckle, ferns;

Holly trees, and giant redwoods;

Kangaroos, giraffes, grizzly bears, hummingbirds, and dachshunds;

Swordfish, catfish, octopi, whales,

All created with a “Let there be”—

                Unprecedented.

The first human shaped by God from dirt,

Life breathed into that mudpie man by the Potter—

                Unprecedented.

The first rain filling the deepest ravines,

Overwhelming the tallest mountain peaks,

A lone family afloat in the quarantine deluge—

                Unprecedented.

Abram called from his homeland,

His wife a nonagenarian first-time mom,

Their promised son on the altar,

The knife raised,

A ram in the brambles offered in his stead—

                Unprecedented.

God’s chosen people delivered to Egypt from famine,

Then delivered into slavery to Pharaoh,

Their deliverer born in secret, raised in Pharaoh’s house,

Called out of hiding in the wilderness

To lead God’s people out of Egypt

With ten devastating plagues—

                Unprecedented.

40 years of trekking through the wilderness,

Led and sheltered by the fire-cloud pillar of God’s glory—

                Unprecedented.

City walls collapsing with  shout and trumpet blast—

                Unprecedented.

A shepherd boy, the giant-slayer with the slingshot,

The man after God’s own heart,

Receiving kingdom and covenant—

                Unprecedented.

A gilded temple whose true splendor was the shekinah glory-fire of God

Descending as the king prayed its dedication—

                Unprecedented.

That temple defiled by false sacrifices to false gods,

The glory exchanged for worthless vanity—

                Unprecedented.

A nation chosen by God sent into exile for her sins,

Preserved and protected even in captivity—

                Unprecedented.

The sulky spokesperson cast into the storm,

Into the sea,

Into the stomach of the great fish,

Outspat upon a beach,

Given a second chance

To proclaim judgment and repentance to his people’s enemies—

                Unprecedented.

Those enemies submitting themselves,

Repenting in sackcloth

From the king to the stables—

                Unprecedented.

Another prophet sharing a safe sleepover with a pride of ravenous lions—

                Unprecedented.

Three faithful Hebrews thrown into a furnace so hot it killed their escort,

Four men walking freely in the fire,

Three emerging unsinged, without even a whiff of smoke on their robes—

                Unprecedented.

That wayward people brought back miraculously to the land of promise,

Rebuilding financed by Nehemiah’s royal employer—

                Unprecedented.

Promised forerunner born to a priest and his barren wife,

Grey hair, wrinkles, and prenatal vitamins—

                Unprecedented.

Very God of Very God, Light of Light,

Enshrouding Himself in an embryo,

Implanted in the darkness of a virgin’s womb,

Waiting for nine months,

Submitting Himself to the violent rigors of birth,

Submitting Himself to the authority of sinful human parents,

Submitting Himself to the unjust slander against his parents and the timing of His birth,

“The carpenter’s Son” (wink, wink)—

Unprecedented.

The God-Man living a perfect life,

Dying the death we sinners deserve,

Submitting Himself to pain and mockery again,

Rising from the tomb on the third day for our justification—

                Unprecedented.

Ten dozen men and women

Praying in an upper room

Setting the world ablaze with good news

When the Spirit of their Savior lit them with tongues of fire—

                Unprecedented.

In this unprecedented year,

So full of unprecedented challenges and griefs,

Let us cling to the comfort of the many times “unprecedented” has been

The signature of God scrawled across the pages of history.

May He work unprecedented glories from this unprecedented year.

 

Aslan is on the move, friends.

Courage, dear hearts!  

 

~crlm, 12/14/20