Look

Look.
Look, patient beyond hurried moment.
Look, resistant through knee-jerk habit reaction.
Look, brave past intimidation mask.
Look, determined find human soul.
Look, soft imagine child within.
Look, surprised finding friend.
Look, humbled at God’s beloved,
image of God,
right there.
Look.

Copyright © 2018, becomingflame.com

I posted this poem before, but wanted to post it again in response to the sermon I heard in last Sunday’s service. One of the themes was about being seen as we are and seeing others as they are…and I just had to share this again.

(Delvin, if you see this post, I’m so grateful for your courageous, honest, thoughtful message. I’ve known the story of Jonah for many years but you brought it to life for me in a completely new and powerful way. And you spoke things this white, male, baby boomer needed to hear. Thank you.)

dw

p.s.  I’m off my normal posting schedule – life is busy with lots of great things to be busy with.  Grace and peace to you…

Possessing God

 

So the soul that hopes in God already belongs to Him, and to belong to Him is the same as to possess Him, since He gives Himself completely to those who give themselves to Him.

— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island, Sentences on Hope

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We began this series on Hope with Thomas Merton telling us that hope takes everything away from us so that, in the end, we may possess everything. Here he gives us the answer to that riddle:

Hope’s mission is to lead us to the only sure hope, that the God Jesus called ‘Father’ is our God, we are his people, and he takes joy in giving us all that can truly be called Life. Any hope less than this is a distraction, a diminishing of this sure hope, the anchor of our souls.

dw

Copyright © 2018, becomingflame.com

It will find us

For all who are in that place of pausing to perceive where their Good Shepherd is leading them next: you are practicing hope now so you can help the rest of us when we come to that place again. Grace and peace to you…

In a world where there is so much drudgery, so much grief, so much emptiness and fear and pain, our gladness in our work is as much needed as we ourselves need to be glad. If we keep our eyes and ears open, our hearts open, we will find the place surely. The phone will ring and we will jump not so much out of our skin as into our skin. If we keep our lives open, the right place will find us.

Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons, “The Calling of Voices”

Faith without hope

 

Without hope, our faith gives us only an acquaintance with God.  Without love and hope, faith only knows Him as a stranger. For hope casts us into the arms of His mercy and of His providence. If we hope in Him, we will not only come to know that He is merciful but we will experience His mercy in our own lives.

— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island, Sentences on Hope

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Faith without hope
is a dry throat
swallowing hard
to push down the panic
“What if I am wrong?”

Unless it is
seething hatred
at a world
that has no good news.

Mere acquaintance with God is terrifying.

dw

Copyright © 2019, becomingflame.com

p.s.

This post from last year is a prayer I have prayed over the years, asking the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to help me be more than an acquaintance.

Photo by Angela Compagnone on Unsplash

 

Hope deprives us

 

Hope deprives us of everything that is not God, in order that all things may serve their true purpose as means to bring us to God.

— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island, Sentences on Hope

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What is this hope that dashes all hopes,
yet is the only sure remedy for hopelessness?

An anchor that holds us, drowns us,
baptizes us clean, clean,
cleaner than we ever wanted to be
(but always wanted to be)
in water that is life itself
if we will only drown ourselves in it,
suck it in knowing it is the death of us,
us as beings with the right to choose,
for our own selves,
what we hope for,
even if what we hope for
would be the death of us.

dw

Copyright © 2018, becomingflame.com

Immigration status (re-post)

We would be,
all of us,
detained at heaven’s border,
seeking life,
fleeing death,
illegal immigrants all;

Detained and
forever separated
from our loved ones;

Were it not
for God’s outrageous mercy,
his willingness to spend
without limit
his very life
for us
so that we
could be
not only citizens of his realm,
but his very sons and daughters,
sharing his home,
his table,
his very life.

dw

Copyright © 2018, all rights reserved.

 

Samuel, we miss you and are praying for you and Julia and Daniel. We want to see your family together again; we want you to worship here with us again. God be with you.