The thing about trust
dw Copyright © 2022
If I don’t have yours
I can’t earn it
No single deed
Or lifetime of deeds
Will do
Not even Jesus Christ
Can earn my trust
Or yours
Unless he already has it
Grace and peace to you…
dw
Photo by dw
Listen to your lives for the sound of him.
Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons, “Delay”
Search even in the dark for the light and the love and the life because they are there also, and we are known each one by name.
How can one hear a whisper
The whisper we each long to hear
I know you and I love you
And I will lead you to Life
If you will follow
How can one hear that whisper
Over the blaring TV screen
The even louder unsocial media
Telling us we are No Good
Unless we show this color
Drive this vehicle
Fly this flag
Wear these shoes
All hollering you are No Good
Unless you spend this extra dollar
Over the subterranean rumble
Signals from family:
You aren’t who we hoped you would be
How can one hear that whisper
Over the substances we use
To kill the pain of being No Good
The loudest voices of all
Telling us, time and time again,
You are No Good
Is there any hearing left
Any ability to discern?
Oh God, have mercy
Whisper loudly
Listen to your lives for the sound of him.
Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons, “Delay”
Search even in the dark for the light and the love and the life because they are there also, and we are known each one by name.
Grace and peace to you…
dw
Photo by dw
Life: that’s what we all hunger for, wait for always,
Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons, “Delay”
whether we keep coming back to places like church to find it or whether we avoid places like church like the plague as the last places on earth to find it:
both delivered in part and derelict in part, immigrants and mongrels all of us.
It’s life as we’ve never really known it but only dreamed it that we wait for.
Life with each other, Life for each other.
Life with the darkness gone.
Jesus, you said
I am the Light of the world
I am the way, the truth, and the life
I came that they might have life abundantly
My joy I give to you
May your words prevail this day
in my life
and in our world
Light shining in the darkness,
the darkness not prevailing
May it be
Grace and peace to you…
dw
Photo by dw
Faith is a way of waiting – never quite knowing, never quite hearing or seeing, because in the darkness we are all but a little lost.
Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons, “Delay”
There is doubt hard on the heels of every belief, fear hard on the heels of every hope, and many holy things lie in ruins because the world has ruined them and we have ruined them.
But faith waits even so, delivered at least from that final despair which gives up waiting altogether because it sees nothing left worth waiting for.
Faith waits – for the opening of a door, the sound of footsteps in the hall, that beloved voice delayed, delayed so long that there are times when you all but give up hope of ever hearing it.
And when at moments you think you do hear it (if only faintly, from far away) the question is:
Can it possibly be, impossibly be, that one voice of all voices?
False choices
The next following hard on the heels of the last
Made by a desperate imposter self
Desperate for anything to distract
From its emptiness, its nakedness
False choices
Exchanging dopamine poofs
For the overwhelming reality
There is a real soul in there
Dying to be known and loved
Dying to hear the One Voice
Calling softly, tenderly
Come home, come home
I’m waiting for you
I will wait
Grace and peace to you…
dw
Photo by dw
I think it is hope that lies at our hearts and hope that finally brings us all here.
Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons, “Hope”
Hope that in spite of all the devastating evidence to the contrary, the ground we stand on is holy ground because Christ walked here and walks here still.
Hope that we are known, each one of us, by name, and that out of the burning moments of our lives he will call us by our names to the lives he would have us live and the selves he would have us become.
Hope that into the secret grief and pain and bewilderment of each of us and of our world he will come at last to heal and to save.
Hope that we can become who we were meant to be – is there a higher hope?
The God of the universe offers it – is any hope more sure?
Grace and peace to you…
dw
Photo by dw
If you want to read more about hope and this blog, check these out:
Pages on Hope
About
becoming flame 