The One Who Dared

You chose Your shape in leaving the Father’s side

forsaking all to save us from our pride

conceiving Your earthly form in Mary’s womb

transforming it, when You walked out of the tomb.

 

Teething, cold, and hunger you preferred

to golden streets and thrones and You endured

Our humble fare, coarse bread and fish You ate

And even more You shared our deadly fate.

 

You came and walked the gritty, earthy dust

To show us all the Father we can trust

to know His love, and know the One who cares

And find our Father through the One who dared.

 

To take our form and share our low estate

and move about using our shambling gait

While speaking words with lips and Spirit’s flame

You set about to raise us from our shame.

 

The children knew, they saw it in Your eyes

The Father’s joy embracing, ’twas a surprise!

You sought us first to put us on the list

We’ll see God, as we find You in our midst.

 

In humbleness I seek You

and by your grace I meet You

There is no rite for meeting God to man

To join us in our hearts is what You planned.

 

My Soul Reaches For You, Lord

 

My soul reaches for You Oh Lord,

For I must respond to Your call.

I am tall in Your sight as you guide me,

I can do the things You require as you lead me.

I have no gift to give You Lord, save what you have given me.

There are weeks when I cannot lift my eyes because of the tears my sadness expresses.

Yet You lift my head oh Lord.

You lift my head and You set me on the high ground, far above the flood.

When I have cried my last tear and walked my last step

When every man has turned away from me

You are the one who will take me up and cherish me.

I am alive in your embrace and at peace under Your gaze

Do not let my heart fail before I have sung your praise with my life.

The Religious Boor

I bring the message, missive from on high

to enlighten all, so with my ideas I

on cantilever’d wings attempt to soar

And in this way reveal myself, a boor.

 

I burst forth in haste and ranting I do come

To prattle at you ’til your ears are numb

to hold forth on the subject of “the God”

Of which, I know as little as a cod.

 

For scholar’s books have been my native land

and soaring I cannot beyond the hand

of the ancient sage who records his best regrets

which I turn ’round and spew out in sudden fits

that do not help, but hinder even the wise

as if I had entrapped them in a vise.

 

Of union with the Spirit I speak not

and of trusting God I will not write a jot

But in my imagined genius do I play

and those who oppose me, well, they’ll rue the day!

 

The gentle grace of God did shine His light

illuminated my shortcomings, and my plight

of my arrows flying wild, which missed the mark

And in my shame I hid me in the dark

 

‘Tis His sweet self who rescued me, you see

and pulled me in His boat out of the sea

for half of it I swallowed as I drowned

He’ll heal me ’cause for this He is renowned.

 

My wish for fame like a rocket did ascend

but exploded in vain infamy in the end

but tho’ I did attempt to steal His crown

His hand reached out to me to sit me down

beside Him on His throne, Oh happy day!

I wandered lost, but He has shown the way.

When I Was Young

When I was young I knew so well how we could all survive
we’ll make our foes our friends I said
and then we’ll start to jive
My philosophy was simple, to drink life to the lees
I drank, I swore, I partied, I did whatever I pleased,
then one day I gave it up and fell down on my knees.
Yet there was something missing there, a time to see, a time to hear
and the heavy things I carried alone, I didn’t have to bear.
I said “God will help me get the dreams,
the ones I hold so dear!”
but God did not deliver on my selfish, empty prayer.

I thought the sun was dawning to burn the clouds away
but instead of turning to His peace, I plunged into the fray
I thought “I know I’m righteous, unlike my friends across the way
my efforts I’ll redouble and I will not long delay
to grind their faces in the dust, I’ll shame them all today.”
I argued with the heathen, I argued with the cults,
I argued with those other guys,
denominations I think they’re call’t
and all of my devotion to humiliating the foe
only turned people away from Him, a fact I now well know.

Jesus had been knocking, so long upon the door
I did not hear the sound of it, because I was so sure
that my continued aggression, would make me good and pure.
To me the clouds of heaven were dull as old gray lead,
and I had not even heard a single thing He’d said.
He knew the thing I overlooked and what a thing it was
for I was wandering in the mist, lost in a religious fog
And I did not even possess the sense that God gave a dog.
A dog, he knows his master, but I could not clearly see
that outside the religious mist, Jesus stood waiting for me.
I tried devotion to the church, I tried to serve, I worked so hard
but for all the good it did me I might have been beating a lump of lard
The Master was always guiding me, though I was not aware
I did not even recognize that He was really there.

So now the answer comes in the twilight of my years
all I had to learn to do was open up my ears
God wants us to hear Him of this I now am sure
and all that precious other stuff ain’t worth a bucket of manure
He knows me better than I do, and He loves me just the same
and the greatest surprise of all, He calls me by my name.

If we haven’t seen the light, then who will see it for us
If we haven’t heard the song, then who will sing the chorus.
If we work for bread alone, our sweat is all in vain
If we won’t listen to Jesus, then we will surely miss His train.

Change Is Coming, Change Has Come

I want to know You Lord, as You know me,
but I am so easily distracted
help me to keep my eyes on You
so that I may learn to walk with you,
every day, every hour, every minute, every heartbeat.

When I know You, I will be able to share You
I will be able to speak, to others, the words You speak to me.
I will be able to love others as You love me
There are so many things that will change
for the better.

You will show me how much You love me
You will show me how much You love others
You will show me how much You love the Father
and how much He loves You.
from this great font, this great reservoir of love
You will teach me how to share Your love
You will send Your Spirit
You will send it like a torrent
to water the earth through me and through the others
my brothers and sisters.

In my lifetime I shall see You move
and the earth will tremble to know that You are here with us
That You are moving through us.
That You are visiting hearts
That You are changing lives

No one can hide from You oh Lord
No one will be able to say
We didn’t see, or we didn’t know
You will be making it clear to all.
And all will know that You are not to be trifled with

They can fear You
They can love You
They can walk with You
They can question You
They can reject You
but no one will be able to ignore You

Your Spirit will flow freely
Your reality will intrude on our fantasies
Your true life will invade our shadow lives
and many will welcome the change.

The glory that was Egypt is now dust

Lord, I come to You with a heart full of thanksgiving, I have seen the swamps and mires men live in, they smooth out a place in the mud, shape it and pack it down to their liking, and they say that this is what You gave them, what You intended for them.
Now, I know that this is the exact opposite of what You intended for us. The swamp is the place we get to leave as we come to live in You. As You told us many times in the Old Testament. The glory of man fades quickly and is as dust under Your feet.
The recent digs in Egypt have underscored this. The recently discovered massive, impressive statue of Amenhotep III made of pink granite, a substance which is indestructible in our eyes, lies in fragments, the largest of which, the head, lies mute, and impotent on it’s side, the beard of the pharaohs ( a symbol of the god-king’s power) broken off.

http://www.france24.com/en/20100228-statue-head-king-tuts-grandfather-found-luxor
On the same site there are a couple of other massive statues which have been reconstructed, they are lumpy ghosts of what they once were. The massive pink granite statue lies in pieces, a puzzle for the conservators to solve, but it is a signpost for us, the Greatest King of Egypt in all of his glory could not build a permanent honor to himself. Instead it lies broken and no longer expresses the magnificence of his reign. How well Shelley put it nearly 200 years ago (Ozymandias, see below). Yet in all this time with the Old Testament, and Shelley for counsel we have not taken this lesson to heart. We constantly strive to build ourselves up, yet if we trust in our riches and in our strength, we will always gather dust as our reward.
Life lies in the riches of Your Spirit, a life lived in love, beloved by You and sharing whatever You bring us. A life illuminated by Your presence.

OZYMANDIAS.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert…Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

1792-1822

[Published by Hunt in “The Examiner”, January, 1818. Reprinted with
“Rosalind and Helen”, 1819. There is a copy amongst the Shelley
manuscripts at the Bodleian Library. See Mr. C.D. Locock’s
“Examination”, etc., 1903, page 46.]

My earnest thanks to Project Gutenberg for making this classic work available. Shelley’s works are in the Public Domain, they are listed here.
http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/s
You have to hunt for them, His work is next to his wife’s writings (Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley).

Wildfire

I had a peculiar feeling the other day, so I sat down to write what the Lord was saying to me. He said this is how it is, how it’s going to be.

It’s like the day you look up and there is smoke on the horizon and, dang, now there’s fire, man is it moving fast, and you see that no-one is escaping the fire -woomp- there goes another neighbor and you look at your neighbor’s place being consumed and you say “Nooo”, but there they go, they are gone already. And the fire races on, it is heading for your place now, but it does a funny thing even though the wind is blowing like crazy, even though the flames are jumping from ten feet high to forty during the gusts. the fire is splitting and it’s going around your place, you were looking for your big shovel and testing the water hose, but now you just stand there and watch in puzzled fascination as the conflagration roars on by.

Then it hits you that none of your neighbors got away in time. and you run across the field over to Archie’s place and you look for the family, but they didn’t make it. and you fall on your knees and hot tears make rivulets on your ash stained cheeks. And it’s tough being alive when the neighbors didn’t even see it coming. They didn’t see it coming, but somehow you did. And you’re standing there alone for a while, surrounded by charred shapes, stunned, when you hear a little cry, you realize it’s a child and you run toward the sound and sure enough Becky, the three year old, is hanging onto the inside rim of the open cistern. She is terrified, you reach in and you coo and make soothing sounds and you hold back the tears. You know that putting the child in the tank was probably the last thing her mother did. So you pick her up and you hold the child close and you tell her it’s OK, and you walk home slowly. You hold the child closer and wrap your jean jacket around her, she is so cold from being wet and you don’t mind that she is getting you wet. She is so exhausted that she falls asleep in your arms still crying a little.

You are crushed by the devastation, your friends couldn’t be saved, it was just too quick, too thorough, yet there is joy in the saving of one life. Little whirlwinds of black ash swirl ahead of you as you carry your precious cargo home.

It’s Like-uh-The Prodigal, man

For those who read this if you care,
in today’s essay I will not share
holy words for holy ways
I’ll tell you instead of my prodigal days.
the depths I’d sunk to I will plumb
my struggles with the demon rum
and dried green herbs in paper spun

How like the prodigal I did boast
And bacchanal parties I would host
To raise a glass, an end to sorrow
and live as if there were no tomorrow
the sunset is a pretty thing
when tinged with cannabis to dream,

but wasted days and awful mornings
sneak up on you without a warning
and drop you on the city’s curbs
to see things for which there are no verbs
When to the bottom I had settled
and failed the test
of my supposed mettle.

The great Good Shepherd had a look
and pity on my cries He took
He lifted me out of the muck
and gave me a job driving a truck
The 23rd Psalm in my mind He played
and He has stayed with me to this very day.

That’s not to say I have not wandered
and so much of my time I’ve squandered
He brought me back, in His gentle way
and corrected, held me in His sway.
For He allowed my Oktoberfest
and with vain illusions laid to rest
I seek Him now ‘most every day
He gives me His peace, to follow the “way”.

The Clods, the Rapids, and the Lord’s Hand

One morning I found myself dreaming, but unlike other times when I’ve had dreams, I am aware that this is a dream. In the dream I am beginning to wake up and I start to feel the things that are in contact with my skin, it feels funny and I’m almost certain that I have dirt clods lying all over me, I try to shake myself awake, but I am stuck in an uncertain level of consciousness, not completely awake and not really asleep.

Then I feel it, the agony of my spirit, it is straining against the clods, and it is aghast at the complacency of my flesh, it is mourning the connection, it is complaining at being tied to the clods, for you see the clods are not lying on me, the clods are me. And my blood flows like the muddy sludge in the Missouri when the spring rains stir up all of the silt, and the current breaks loose the boats large and small and carries them along to their destruction.

I am suddenly aware of the feeling that someone is digging in my dirt, and I shout, “don’t move my dirt, I just got it the way I want it .”

Then I see who is doing the digging and I recognize that it is Jesus, and He is not really digging, He is reforming, reshaping, and hey, He is throwing stuff away!

I start to shout again and then I realize, you’re not supposed to shout at the Lord even if you have a good reason. My mind interrupts and says why not? King David shouted at Him a lot. So while I am having this argument with myself, He is finishing the renovation, He shakes me and says, “get up”.

My spirit is calmed by His presence, and I no longer feel like clods all over but there is something going on in my heart, it is as if there had been a curtain over my heart and it is gone and now there is a really bright light inside. Somehow even though the clods are gone I find that my flesh is uncomfortable with the arrangement, it is trying to hide from the light, but there is no place for it to go, no place to hide.

Suddenly I see what He wants me to see, the road, it is gently rising towards the mountains and my spirit does a little dance at the sight of it.

I am dragging my stubborn flesh along the road which is full of rocks and mud holes, then I hear the Spirit, not mine, but His calling to mine. And I look up and see that Jesus has joined me, for my spirit called back to His. The road is not smoother, not less muddy, but somehow, now I am not feeling every bump and rock and our pace quickens.

There are fallen trees up ahead, but I begin to take my lead from what the Lord is doing.

He takes my hand and we leap over the tree trunks.

It is beginning to be fun.

We are pretty much running now.

Then I see it, the biggest, roughest rapids I have ever seen, there is no bridge and there is so much water that I know I can’t make it.
Then the Lord does something I don’t expect, He wades into the rapids, this time I reach for His hand as we go in. It’s tough, there are rocks the size of mini-vans and water gushing everywhere and pounding on me.
I loose my footing more than once, but He never skips a beat, He never loosens His grip on my hand. Soon we are climbing out the other side and it feels real good to be done with it. I am feeling lighter and I look around to see what I have lost in the flood, and then I notice that my body got hung up on one of the rocks, I look up at the Lord in puzzlement and He says smiling, “today we are going to My house, don’t worry you will like it a lot.”
So on we trudge, but then I notice we’re not trudging, we’re flying.

the path He shows me

why do I do the things i do?
someday i will do exactly what He wants me to.
i wish it was today, but sadly it is not, it makes me sorry that i am so stubborn.
i have not arrived, no alas i have not, but here is something to consider.
My kinsman Redeemer has appeared and He will heal me,
He has and He will make me whole, and there is not a whole lot i can do about it,
but that’s good because He can and He has promised to do it.
there is so little that i can do about it.
there is nothing i can do about it.
that is what is so neat, He can and i can’t
and that is as it should be for how else would i know how incredible He is.
if i could heal myself;
if i could manage my shattered affairs, if i could mend my tatters, my rags.
if i could see clearly, apart from Him, i would not even look His way.
that’s the blindness of pride,
the blindness i exemplified.
after so very long without a clue, He got my attention,
i once thought that i would not allow utter defeat to spoil my plans,
then even that plan fell apart,
but the failures were well worth the introduction to Him.
for sitting in the ashes of failure i looked up, to Him.
the crushing defeats are as nothing compared to the warmth of His regard.
“priests” don’t understand it, “ministers” don’t either, they point to salvation
and how they think, they are instrumental in the process,
yeah they missed the point, they missed the bus.
it is not what they are doing at all. it never was.
it is and always has been what He did and what He is doing. right now and always, forever.

you know it’s not hard, He wants us to seek Him. no it’s not hard at all.
He has always been there watching for you to look His way.

i’ve seen His face, it is human, that is the overwhelming part,
He has a human face full of tenderness, and understanding.
that is who He is to us, He is The Human, the first real human.
as humanity was intended.
His face is our face or how we will be
and to us His face is the Father’s face.
our kind and loving Father.
it is important to note that He never had a thought for Himself,
He thought of His Father,
He thought of the crippled, the blind, the possessed,
He thought of us, we who were still so far away, in sin and in time.
you know He could have walked away,
before the guards got to the garden,
He could have said “forget it”, but no, he stayed in the garden and they got Him.
Adam didn’t make it, he stumbled on his way to the orchard.
Eve was the enabler that time so long ago, but Adam stepped out. out of the garden.
Jesus stayed in the garden and faced the music for us all,
for Adam, for you and me.
Jacob would have run away,
Moses would have run away,
Peter did run away,
i would have run away,
and we would have been right.
because He is the only one who could do it.
absolutely the only one. and He did do it.
and for that reason He deserves everything.
absolutely everything.
everything belongs to Him.
the funny thing is, He did it all, to get it all, to share it all.
His love, His life, His place with the Father,
He gives to us. because,
because of what?
because He loves us.
He loves us and wants us to be with Him,
to be found in Him.
so when He calls you,
don’t start looking for your jacket,
don’t sit down to put on your shoes,
don’t try to find your wallet.
just go
He is all you need.
He really is you know.