Words to bridge the gap between faith and life…
Weary eyes:
your sight grows faint, yet Heaven’s gate
still opens up for you to walk through.
This is enough; O grace enough.
Let weary eyes now rest.
Like Simeon, though waiting lags,
this promise stands in baby’s rags and gives you rest.
Your rags have failed; His are your glory.
Eyes: this is enough. Now rest.
O weary eyes, now rest.
Enough. The shaking of your lids must rest.
No dream, nor fear: this is enough.
Eden restored; His sacrifice
gives clothes
to dazzle shame.
Hold tight.
My covenants break; I cannot hold
myself, my trust. My word
unbinds before I bind
myself to it.
Yet this is mine,
this is enough:
Jesus my own and His brother.
What world may fling,
what failings ring against me
count for nothing. This
is enough. My God, my covenant,
my binding joy. Hold tight.
Hold tight. Hold me tight:
what coverings I have sought,
what fig-leaves,
cannot disguise my nakedness.
My shame burns garments – yet
You clothe in righteousness.
Hold tight.
Hold me tight; You are enough,
yet I am afraid, and turn
to fig-leaves when rightly I should
bathe myself in You.
O Lamb, my joy, my garment of blood,
hold tight.
O hold me tight.
J.S. Bach / Ich habe genug, BWV 8 (Herreweghe): https://youtu.be/XopQG0Gjgmo
Number days, yet know your days
are kept in Him.
If He held stars, then He can hold
your dross, your deadened weight.
At dead-ends, wait. He makes
all things well.
Hope can break, yet covenant
anchors days and ends.
Morning mends. The dross, the deadened weight
of broken hope lifts.
When days are numbered, unencumbered
steadfast love holds tight.
[BWV 12] 06. Choral. Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan: https://youtu.be/3Il1YH2x280
Call this to mind.
Your mind is not a vacuum, nor
carved in stone, impervious to change.
Neurones learn the pathways we expect.
Call this to mind: He is faithful.
Call this to heart.
The heart weighs heavy, the soul drags;
mud and mire are easiest to tread.
But you were not born here; He breathed you in other fields.
Call this to heart and breathe.
Call to spirit; deep calls to deep.
Weigh deep before the water is found.
Nothing’s over, nothing’s new under sun,
and the dawn is as sure as the sorrow.
What weighs heaviest now will soon be light;
what looms most stormily passes soon.
Clouds cannot linger; waves must break.
Because of this, we wait.
This lightness feels most dense now, but
the weight of glory, light as air,
will fall and smother all your Now
and revel in Not Yet.
We call to mind His Nonetheless and trust;
bookends of anguish hope in morning joy.
Though now the question, soon falls this reply:
Be gathered up in sky.
Held down by denial,
oppressed by oblivion,
as torrents break we fancy them a whirlpool.
Nothing prepares for this crisis of self,
when the spirit, crying, How long, how long?
hears instead the call to crawl
into the dust and weep.
To whom have You dealt thus?
Yet no better are we who bear Your name and smirk
than those who know no different.
Beneath Your wounds, this is joy:
the outcome sure,
where cross and crown stand interwoven.
Remember us, Jesus, when You return.
We remember Your cross, and wait.
How long? How long? I drag my voice.
I cling, I waiver, I thirst, I desire –
My spirit shall rejoice.
In silence, in hum of background noise,
I stretch my neck from familiar mire –
How long? How long? I unravel voice.
The wait, the weight of hidden joys,
When all my sky clouds round and gyres –
My spirit shall rejoice.
Expectancy grows numb. Life silences choice.
Better to shake, better to blaze on fire.
How long? How long? I unfurl my voice.
Complacency leadens; I wave but cannot hoist.
Yet what is lost? the dove’s coo enquires.
Can the spirit still rejoice?
The soul’s pivot; heaviness gathers poise.
Let anchored hope never expire.
How long? How long? Lift high your voice.
My spirit, my spirit shall rejoice.
Waves drag, anchor fails –
my God my God why
In this torpor, what lifts?
The heart, bird-like, hovers –
an albatross, a vulture?
Yet a dove dives deep and holds;
it coos what cannot be cried.
My God my God why
– too heavy for words, yet hands can be raised,
barely, above the waves.
This is enough. Moan, wail, cry.
Words are not needed where the Spirit has flight.
Trust, and open your drowning arms.
And keep –
keep me, keep watch, keep hope.
The pains that crush me are like pricks beside
Your agony, and yet
You hold
arms out as though to gather in
more pain, more shame, and thus
more me.
Man of sorrows,
what a name,
what a scheme
that stretches out the heavens
yet does not scorn these nails.
Take
my proud sobbing, my heart’s throbbing; take
all my attempts to rise with Self.
Enfold me in Your scars and sing
Your grace
through endless days.
The Consolations of Writing 