Blessed are you, the pragmatic.You who have run the math and know what adds up…and what doesn’t.You have set it all down.You who don’t hope or dream or plan anymore because… what’s the point? But blessed are you, learning to live here.Your world has shrunk.Pain or grief or fear has sucked upevery bit of oxygen…
You got it right, as poets doMr. Gerard Manley Hopkins,you with the whimsical nameand the solemn truth, that“The world is charged with the grandeur of God,It will flame out like shining from shook foil.” And that despite all that humans are and do“There lives the dearest freshness deep down things.” And it calls to us.It…
Wise men.They followed a star to where you lay,tiny king.Wonderfully ordinary in the soundsyou made,perfect in the way all babies are,but worshipped by important men,wise men bearing gifts,looking, searching, plotting trajectoriesand making plans that,once they were sure the signs were right,they’d follow. Blessed are we who are searching,looking for the signs,desiring above all the star,…
Jesus, this is the great inversionI would not have knownhad you not appeared and made yourselfsmall. Jesus, I would have been satisfiedwith the God who moves mountainsand whose breath imparts lifebut who never cried in his mother’s arms. The world whispers to me aboutwhat must be done.About empires and war.About efficiency and strength,but there you…
Blessed are we who wait with bated breath,who wait for something new to be born—for new hope or new joy or new life.Blessed are we whose patience grows thinnerby the day. We who are tired of the world as it is—in all of its heartache and lossand hopelessness.We who want more.More hope. More joy. More…
God, we long for peace,but we have already drawn our blades.We are at war with each other,and within ourselves. Our world—the evidence of our folly—on full display.We waste away in quarries dug by our own hands. Oh, Jesus, come to us.Come suddenly, into the center of our deepest need.Come swiftly into the chaos of our…
God, these are darkening days,with little hope in sight.Help us in our fear and exhaustion.Anchor us in hope. Blessed are we with eyes opento see the accumulated suffering of danger,sickness, and loneliness,the injustice of racial oppression,the unimpeded greed and misuseof power, violence, intimidation,and use of dominance for its own sake, the mockery of truth,and disdain…
Blessed are you who live here,this space between simple categories and easy answers. You who wonder why this is your life,why you got this diagnosis,or why you still struggle with infertility,or why you haven’t found your birth parents,or why you can’t kick the addictionor why your kids haven’t come home. Blessed are you who build…
Blessed are you for feeling the pull,that tug back toward a part of yourselfso easily ignored.Yourself at ease.Yourself in the flow.Yourself at play. Pain or boredom or business has sucked up all the energy.But wait. Aren’t you more than a crisis firefighter? Blessed are you when you relax.When you feel young againWhen you LAY THE…
Teach us how to pray, God,when our faith doesn’t feel like comfort.when there are not easy answers or tidy scripts.when there are no other words but lament. Teach us how to pray, God,when we see Christ in Gethsemaneat the center of it all. Teach us how to pray, God,when the Spirit groans alongside us,speechless too,…
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