One of my favourite moments in the Bible is the little, anticlimactic story after one of the big show-stopping stories. It comes in 1 Kings 19, immediately after Elijah has triumphed over all the false prophets of Baal and the land-grabbing wicked King Ahab. God has shown up in an undeniable way to give ElijahContinue reading “Ordinary Wednesday: Not in the fire, not in the quake”
Tag Archives: despair
As yet untitled
As the changing but constant expectationsof a year that no-one chose keep knockingand the day of the Lord lingers and tarries from my watch-post,I longto take this one quietly, on the bench,with Saul and the others who couldn’t run the race.No shame in being worn out whenthe swift themselves are flaggingand the flagsare all atContinue reading “As yet untitled”
Advent 13: But I said, “I have laboured in vain”
The sun beating heavily on our heads, we feltthe agony of things straining against themselves,felt the longing but not the reward and grewweary of the day. When I spoke, it was gravel in my throat.“Show me,” I demanded, “the length of these days.Show me the end.” And the sundid not relent in its frenzied beamingwhileContinue reading “Advent 13: But I said, “I have laboured in vain””
Advent 9: No despair
…we are almost ready to fall in love with our own desolation. (Christina Rossetti, Seek and Find) Whether height of summer or bleak midwinter, there’s death: in bare-branched trees or brittle grass. Fire or frost, the end’s the same, both killers and destroyers alike. And the greatest foe of all’s despair, the sickness blighting notContinue reading “Advent 9: No despair”
Count It Loss
Whether misplaced or stolen, the effect is the same: the search, the panic, the retracing of steps, the sense that not an object but an organ, not a possession but a position, has vanished, without trace. Whether passing or lasting, the search seems boundless. The mind must run to what-ifs because you never know: theContinue reading “Count It Loss”
Lay this body down… – Streaming Page CXVI’s “Good Friday to Easter” Day Three
What now? Death takes the best; the body droops upon the Cross. We look; the sting in eyes declares that all is done. It is finished. What? Are we done for, Lord? Where the hopes and fears of all the years, once met in You? Where now? All done? All done for? What next?Continue reading “Lay this body down… – Streaming Page CXVI’s “Good Friday to Easter” Day Three”
Lent 24: Friday of Third Week
Our minds cannot contain something so small, so microscopic, yet Universe sustained within – a mustard seed which sees the mountain, sees despair beneath its foot and says to it, Now move. O God. The mountain blocks our view. The heights have dizzied; the depths distress. Open your seed within.
The Consolations of Writing 