A Moment's Carry

Over the past couple of weeks I have intermittently received short words of encouragement from brothers and sisters in Christ. This is what it is like:

Sore feet. My legs ache and tremble
with each step further up this graph
of limitless convexity.

But with a word I am lightened
and I soar upon the arms of
my brother. Ahhh, encouragement.

Praise God, by whose Spirit we are made into the type of people that care to encourage each other. I pray for community steeped in encouragement, where God smiles.

Distant Shores, continued

(This poem, started below, looks like it will be an ongoing project. Hopefully you enjoy seeing this little bit of the process behind it.)

Awake from deathlike sleep I stand
On beaches of the finest sand
And breathe at last, deeply in
Of potent scents and living wind
Vitality, the end of rest
Engulfs my lungs and burns my chest
Now sprint or fly but do not stay
Greet with life the coming day!

The soft white sand is met above
By firsttrees of a marv'lous grove
And further up 'gainst furthest skies
The silhouetted mountains rise
And crowned with growing rays of gold
They watch the land as rulers bold
But only in their master's stead
You see! They bow before his head

All is humbled, still and small
No lapping waves or bluejay's call
A gasp of joy caught in my mouth
As I join West and North and South
In bowing to the priveleged East
Ascending star, a sun at least
Parts the mountains, to their delight
And cracks the sky with morning light

Beneath This Leaden Face

I have heard that when Queen Elizabeth died her face was already buried beneath three inches of heavy white lead makeup. She began using it to cover the scars left behind by smallpox, but it turned out the stuff was toxic. After too many days the skin underneath the mask began to deteriorate and, all the while, the queen became known by her ghastly countenance. To remove the leaden stuff would have rendered her unrecognizable to her world. Her mask became her face.

So it is with my person, but with a startling difference. As God scrapes off the layers of accumulated 'personality,' 'reputation,' and 'identity' the true state of my self is being revealed. But instead of finding the ugliness of old scars and flaking skin I am finding a new creature, smooth and strong and swift. It is not the 'me' of emptiness and ugliness that I feared, to the praise of His glorious grace.

But neither is it a 'me' of comfort and complacency. Its newness and passion are frightening - who knows where I will take me when I am him. And so I find myself waking in the morning and smearing on that old makeup, trying to maintain some vestige of my leaden personality. Despite its smothering nature.

But daily, too, I pray God to remove those layers that I add, and those that remain from past years. It is a great credit to His patience that he has not left me to such neuroses. Instead he consistently scrapes away more than I can cake on, bringing his new creature more fully into this world every day, making me daily less 'of the world.'

God, please continue to scrape away that old semblance of personality that I called a self. I want to let your new creation shine in me - I want to be him.

The Distant Shores

Awake from deathlike sleep I stand
On beaches of the finest sand
And breathe at last, deeply in
Of potent scents and living wind

Vitality, the end of rest
Engulfs my lungs and burns my chest
Now sprint or fly but do not stay
Greet with life this wondrous day!

The soft white sand is met above
By first trees of a marv'lous grove
And further up 'gainst furthest skies
Platonic forms of mountains rise
...

This poem, like the one below, to be continued on another night.

The Acts of the Apostles

You can almost hear the low hum of excitement coming off the page. Hushed voices punctuated by gasps of faithful disbelief.

"He's doing what? Where? The Holy Spirit? Who told you that? You're kidding? THE Saul?"

These disciples, apostles, appointed as the physical leaders of the burgeoning church, watch in amused awe as their Master spreads His message, their message, over their ancient world. The Holy Spirit is falling upon the gentiles, cripples are walking, the blind are seeing, and it's happening everywhere.

They almost got used to it from Jesus, and when they themselves were the conduits of such tremendous grace at least they were there to take stock of the ramifications. But this is getting out of control, certainly out of their control. I wouldn't be surprised if The Original "The Rock" Peter shook his head occasionally as the group of believers that he was to call his flock spiralled into the thousands, tens of thousands, and spread throughout the Roman world.

Peter: 'Feed my sheep,' he says. I should've asked for a head count!

But it's said with the wide-eyed smile of appreciation and wonder. Daily they were blessed by reports of God's grace. New churches forming, established fellowships growing and persevering, offerings taken, gifts given, possessions sold, prophecies fulfilled.

Excitement every morning. 'What will God do today?' they must have thought as they tightened their sandals, expecting the miraculous.

'What will God do today?' I ask.

Thanks, tonight

Father, thank you for answering questions. Bluntly, unequivocally.

Father, thank you for granting wisdom. Quietly, generously.

Father, thank you for opening doors. Smilingly, insistently.

Father, thank you for closing the same. Stalwartly, unapologetically.

Father, thank you for being holy. Completely, unapproachably.

Father, thank you for giving grace. Abundantly, daily.

Father, thank you for pardoning me. Decidedly, eternally.

Father, thank you for changing me. Remarkably, continually.

Father, thank you for being my father. Tonight, thankfully.

For The End

God, for the last year you have been teaching me a lesson that I have yet to learn, one that I may not fully learn until it is null. But I want You to know that I am beginning to understand its importance, and here tonight I will praise You in my utterly limited capacity for a blessing that deserves far more.

It is the promise of The End. The point of faith and hope that tells us that despite daily inequities and lifelong struggles, in The End, everything will be alright. It will be better, it will be All Right.

Jesus the Christ, my savior and lord whom you have set on a throne with universe and Heaven as his domains will return to this little planet. But this time there will be no starlit birth. This time there will not be thirty years of humble training. This time there will not be a quiet submission. This time there will be no cross. Instead of writing in the dirt, trumpets will call Your message from the skies.

That throne Christ so rightly occupies beyond our world will find its match upon the earth and Jesus will inhabit in bodily glory that place of lordship that we are setting ever so slowly aside in our own hearts. The Great Conquerer of death will conquer also this little outpost of biological life and will right those wrongs that have marred our species and their hearts.

And this End, my Great Father, is there for us to hope upon every morning. It awaits us in the day of your choosing, eons or seconds from now, but eternally present to your unblinking eyes. It is Your promise to Your children, another teeming measure of grace.

Tonight, LORD, I hope upon The End in my stunted way. I look through the fog of falty hopes and misplaced securities to a day that will surely come, when that curtain of fog will be torn from top to bottom and I will look upon the glorious face of Christ. The End, the Great Beginning. Amen.