Truth be told, we forgot all about the axe.Busy with our landscaping and renovations, weneglected our gardens, all tangles of weedsand fruit trees budding nothing while we poisoned the soil. No surprise to find that it should come to this,the moment of reckoning when our garden would judge.Yet we were golden and glimmering,felt eternal forContinue reading “Advent 8: The axe is lying at the root of the trees”
Tag Archives: judgment
No Ghosts This Year #10
There was nothing else he could tell Pa now. Nothing else, because words could not convey the kind of knowledge he now held. It was knowledge of an utterly certain though intangible kind, yet it carried with it also the equally palpable certainty that none would believe it. He could not tell you how heContinue reading “No Ghosts This Year #10”
Catechism 32
What do justification and sanctification mean? Justification means our declared righteousness before God, made possible by Christ’s death and resurrection for us. Sanctification means our gradual, growing righteousness, made possible by the Spirit’s work in us. (New City Catechism) First, declared – altogether Continue reading “Catechism 32”
Mark 11
No doubt if food was all that He required He could have made it bear for Him but leaves had presaged early fruit and nothing showed there yet. Not the season for figs, and yet He who made the fig tree sprout could change the seasons with His will. If curses worked, then why notContinue reading “Mark 11”
Catechism 28
If last week’s catechism question was hard, this week’s is vastly harder, and it’s with great trepidation that I approach setting this to poetry. But the question of divine punishment of sin is one from which we cannot escape if we want to grapple with what it means to live before a righteous God. MyContinue reading “Catechism 28”
Catechism 18
Will God allow our disobedience and idolatry to go unpunished? No, every sin is against the sovereignty, holiness, and goodness of God, and against his righteous law, and God is righteously angry with our sins and will punish them in his just judgment both in this life, and in the life to come. (New CityContinue reading “Catechism 18”
Lent 37: Thursday of Fifth Week
Look, the shepherd separates: sheep from goats He divides, bone and marrow He prises open, hearts’ deep secrets He dissects. Look, the true ones walk through streets and feed the poor. The children give their food to dogs, the princes clothe the naked… Look; deep inside, now look. Secret acts reveal ourContinue reading “Lent 37: Thursday of Fifth Week”
Lent 36: Wednesday of Fifth Week
And it will reveal who has taken talents, hid them in the frugal field, who has sown what has been given and let small things grow. And it will reveal the hearts of those who plant and reap, the hearts of servants great and small, the motives of the heart’s dark countries. TheContinue reading “Lent 36: Wednesday of Fifth Week”
Parousia
In the juvescence of the year Came Christ the tiger (T.S. Eliot, “Gerontion”) Still He bursts into our courts Where our Pharisee-hearts change coins for doves And the tables we man to show who’s in charge Are upturned by His rage. Still HeContinue reading “Parousia”
The Consolations of Writing 