Monthly Archives: March 2025

Breath-taking…

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O vast Rondure, swimming in space,
Covered all over with visible power and beauty,
Alternate light and day and the teeming spiritual darkness,
Unspeakable high processions of sun and moon and countless stars above,
Below, the manifold grass and waters, animals, mountains, trees,
With inscrutable purpose, some hidden prophetic intention,
Now first it seems my thought begins to span thee.

Down from the gardens of Asia descending,
Adam and Eve appear, then their myriad progeny after them,
Wandering, yearning, curious, with restless explorations,
With questionings, baffled, formless, feverish, with never-happy hearts,
With that sad incessant refrain, Wherefore unsatisfied soul? Whither O mocking life?

Ah who shall soothe these feverish children?
Who justify these restless explorations?
Who speak the secret of impassive earth?

Yet soul be sure the first intent remains, and shall be carried out,
Perhaps even now the time has arrived.
After the seas are all crossed,
After the great captains and engineers have accomplished their work,
After the noble inventors,
Finally shall come the poet worthy that name,
The true son of God shall come singing his songs.

(Walt Whitman: extracts from Book XXVI, Passage to India, 1871, as used in Ralph Vaughan Williams Sea Symphony,1910)

Let me exalt you, my God the king, and let me bless your name forevermore. Every day let me bless you, and let me praise your name forevermore.

Great is the Lord and highly praised, and his greatness cannot be fathomed. Let one generation to the next extol your deeds and tell of your mighty acts. Of the grandeur of your glorious majesty and your wondrous acts let me treat.

And the power of your awesome deeds let them say, and your greatness let me recount. The fame of your great goodness they utter, and of your bounty they joyously sing.

Gracious and merciful is the Lord, slow to anger, great in kindness. Good is the Lord to all, and his mercy is over all his creatures..

Your kingship is a kingship for all time, and your dominion for all generations.. The Lord’s praise let my mouth speak, and let all flesh bless his holy name forevermore.

(Ps 145 extracts, R Alter translation)

I am not in the habit of quoting poetry in this blog, but these words by Whitman are very much in my mind just now as they form the text of a piece of music which I am learning and will be performing with a chorus and orchestra later in the year.. The poet is lost in wonder as he ponders the globe which we call earth, aware of the immeasurable vastness which lies beyond our skies and also the unfathomable riches and mysteries which are all around us on our beloved planet. He meditates on the long ages of human existence, marked by struggle and exploration, an unquenchable search for more.. and instead of merely resigning himself to the unanswerable, he speaks a word of hope, of expectation, and points to the coming of the true poet, who will in some undefined way, meet the deepest longings of humankind.

I love this picture of how in the fulness of time, and in fulfilment of an eternal purpose,  God’s son has come to reveal the answer to our deepest need, and that answer is in words of power and beauty, of music and joyous celebration – don’t you thrill to the idea of our Lord as the great singer of songs? Surely the great author and the originator of music will bring with him the most marvellous music, beside which all our greatest composers will look like pale imitations, and we will finally hear for ourselves the songs which are the music of God’s nearer presence and glory!

Even now we hear echoes of the song, since Jesus has come; but its fullest expression awaits his return and remaking of all things.  For the present, we – like psalmist and his companions – sing our best songs when we sing and celebrate our king in all his goodness, and his eternal dominion. So often we feel that words are insufficient to express our wonder and thankfulness, yet when we combine them with music our hunger to worship is satisfied, and we join the praise of all God’s creation which is continually exalting him.

O Thou, transcendant… majestic beyond imagination, let breath be caught, let senses be entranced and worship rise from my heart as I reflect on your power and abundant generosity in creation and above all as I consider my Lord, the true Son of God and the great singer of songs, whose words are the words of life. 

Note: you may like to find and listen to a recording of the 4th movement of Vaughan William’s Sea Symphony, to appreciate the marriage of words and music!

My unruly thoughts..

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O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord. You hem me in – behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.

(Ps 139.1-6)

.. no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us… The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to them, and they cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned… But we have the mind of Christ.

(1 Cor 2.11&12,14&16)

The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

(2 Cor 10.4&5)

Words matter very much to me – the words I use to express my thoughts, and those which others use to communicate to me. The discipline of writing this blog every week has been of immeasurable value, as I have wrestled with challenges and found words to articulate what I am learning (or trying to learn). However, I am aware that sometimes the words which I say to myself about life, about faith, about myself, are not necessarily the full truth. I am not talking about the times when I try to think better of myself than I ought, but those other times, when the voice in my head is vicious, negative, full of bitter condemnation and a triumphant hopelessness.

The devil knows that words matter to me; the enemy of my soul knows that I desire above all things to love my Lord, to become more like him, and to grow in faith and understanding. And that enemy knows that if I can be got to tell myself untruths, to believe his lies about me, then he can keep me penned up in a pit like the Doubting Castle so graphically described in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress… This vulnerability to assuming the worst about ourselves is not uncommon, and I think many faithful, conscientious and mature saints share it. A tender conscience, an awareness of the offence of sin in God’s sight, and a fear of thinking too highly of ourselves all combine to create a predisposition to be our own worst critics, and constant detractors. As is so often the case, we take something healthy – an awareness of our own persisting frailty – and turn it into a weapon for the enemy to use against us.

What is the remedy? Firstly, to be given wisdom to recognise that this is what is going on! And I am very thankful for that awareness, but more is needed if I am to break free from the cycle of despair which so readily entraps me. Paul says to the saints in Corinth that believers have the Spirit of God himself within us, the very mind of Christ, so that we may see and understand what is true – what our Almighty God and Father says and does, for and in us. The psalmist meditates on the alarming and encouraging fact that all our thoughts and deeds are known to God – these unruly thoughts of mine which are misrepresenting God just as surely as the serpent did in Eden when tempting Eve – ‘did God say…?’ I need not pretend that God doesn’t know, and can be sure of his love in spite of my unruly thoughts!

So the second step seems to be to bring my thoughts – the words of this inner critic – into the light of what Christ has done for me, and what God says about me.. to see if there is any correlation at all! And when I find that I am believing falsehoods, that my enemy has bound me by lies, then I take the weapons of truth, of God’s word, of Christ’s victory, and – as Paul writes – I wage war against all that has set itself up within me against the true knowledge of God. I can do this in the full assurance that my enemy is already defeated, and that as I am in Christ, so I am victorious over all that would keep me from the fulness of life which is God’s gift and desire for me. Paul doesn’t write – ‘we TRY to take captive every thought’ – he has no doubt that it can be done!

Dear Father, thank you that in Christ, all your children are victors over the enemy of our souls. Thank you that we can know the truth because your Spirit dwells within us, and is transforming us into the likeness of Christ himself. Aid us O Father, as we gradually uncover the lies which we have believed, and enable us to take those thoughts captive – to bring them up against your truth and to reject them. Set us free to live in glad humility as your redeemed people, knowing and living by the truth which is your Son, my Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen.

In the world, but not of it….

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Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man was standing in front him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, “Are you for us, or for our enemies?” “Neither,” he replied, “but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come,,,”

(Jos 5.13&14)

Nebuchadnezzar.. said to them, “Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the golden image that I have set up?…. If you do not worship, you shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace. And who is the god who will deliver you out of my hands?”

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego answered and said to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter, If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.”

(Dan 3.14-18)

“I pray for them. I am not praying for the world. but for those you have given me, for they are yours….I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one… Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.

(Jn 14.9,14&15,17)

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer..

(Rom 12.2&12)

Do I trust God when things are not working out as I want them to? Whether on a personal scale, within my wider community or globally… Is God only worthy of my praise and loyalty when his ways make sense to me? Am I getting swept along in the tides and trends of social media and culture wars, so that my beliefs and attitudes are not being shaped by the truth anymore? Do I really believe that God can keep me in peace and hope through all the turmoil which is human life, or am I putting conditions on my trust?

The story of God’s dealings with humankind as revealed in the scriptures is of mess, muddle, failure and grief – God works through these things, bringing light out of darkness and always steadily fulfilling his purposes. The coming of Jesus, the revolutionary King who defeated death and inaugurated God’s kingdom in the face of all that evil could do, has not changed the context within which the story continues.

God has never aligned his kingdom with any human institution, no matter what that power may have claimed for itself. Joshua’s encounter with the commander of the Lord’s army showed how we ought to think at all times as God’s people – “Where is God working, how may I align myself with his purposes?” Jesus prayer for his followers was that they would be guarded by the Spirit as they remained in this broken world, kept apart by that divine shield to be witnesses to the light. If we let ourselves be enticed into expecting that human institutions will bring about peace, justice, freedom (all the things God’s kingdom promises), then we are without hope, and have nothing to offer our world Both sides of every argument always need to hear that third voice – God’s summons to humanity to recognise and worship him. Jesus confronted the religious and political establishments of his day, but also challenged those who were oppressed and rebellious – the kingdom is always counter-cultural. Followers of Jesus, those who are deeply rooted in God’s word, should be able to resist the pressures of society to conform to the latest trends and opinions. Truth is our anchor, the truth of God’s nature, his saving power and his coming kingdom.

The experience of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego reminds us that resisting human power can be costly, but also shows us what our attitude should be when faced with reprisal or threats… If God chooses to deliver us, well and good. If for whatever reason he does not, then he is still our God, entirely worthy of our praise and devotion. Paul’s words to his friends in Rome speak directly into our situation in these days of challenge, upheaval and uncertainty – and it is only as those securely anchored in Christ that we can put these words into practice in our lives.

Heavenly Father, thank you for reminding me that I cannot put my hope in human institutions, but must rest solely on you. Thank you that when I do so, I am set free from worrying about what is happening in the world, and can come confidently  to you in prayer because You are able to bring light into the darkness. Thank you that your people around the world can offer your love and light; help us to stand apart from the tides of opinion and to be joyful as we hope in you. Help us to be present in your beautiful broken world, loving generously, and showing by our steadiness that we have an unshakeable foundation, our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.

Love.. is

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God spoke: “Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature…”

(Gen 1.26. the Message)

Jesus said,”.. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him. You’ve even seen him!…. to see me is to see the Father”

(Jn 14.7&9. The Message)

Love from the centre of who you are; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing second fiddle. .. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality.

Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath. Laugh with your happy friends when they’re happy; share tears when they’re down. Get along with each other; don’t be stuck up. Make friends with nobodies; don’t be the great somebody.

Don’t hit back; discover beauty in everyone. If you’ve got in in you, get along with everybody. Don’t insist on getting even; that’s not for you to do. “I’ll do the judging,” says God. “I’ll take care of it.”

Don’t run up debts, except for the huge debt of love you owe each other… When you add up everything in the law code, the sum total is love.

(Romans 12.9-19, 13.8&10. The Message)

By his son, God created the world in the beginning, and it will all belong to the son at the end. This son perfectly mirrors God, and is stamped with God’s nature.

(Heb 1.2&3. The Message)

What are we here for? What is our purpose, and the reason for being human with all that means? The very first words of the Hebrew Scriptures give us the fundamental answer from which an infinite variety of paths will flow – we are here in order to be like God! That doesn’t sound very practical… so let me unpack a little.

God is revealed as the Maker, the great Artist and source of all creative energies. To be like Him therefore is to reflect his creativity, delight in beauty, to share in his care for creation. That overwhelming abundance of good things is made to glorify God and reflect his nature, his generosity; it is an expression of a love that delights to give.

The little word ‘us’ indicates to the reader that God exists in community; beyond time and created space, our Almighty and infinite Maker is in loving relationship, enjoying and sharing at the very heart of deity. To be like God then, is to be made for community, for mutual appreciation and affection, for shared life.

Let’s think in particular, of how to be like God is to love –  how does God love? I believe that all of scripture is a revelation of love in action. From the codes of law which God gave as an expression of love, through the admonitions of the prophets against the lovelessness of God’s people, and ultimately in Jesus life, death and resurrection that love is demonstrated and expressed. This is not a soft, indulgent love; this is a never-quenched flame which burns to achieve the best possible outcomes for the beloved – guarding them against danger, calling them back from the ways of folly and rebellion, providing for them what they most need and cannot achieve for themselves.

We, as the creatures of this loving God, are not called to do all that He does. But in Jesus we have a clear example of what it means to be “like God” as mere human beings. Jesus claimed to be God, to be revealing God to humanity in a perfect way. So Jesus shows us what it is like for a human being to love as God loves.

As you read the wonderfully rich list of love-in-action in Romans, consider how Jesus did all these things during his time walking among us. Rejoice that none of these things is out of our reach! We are not being called to an impossibility but to the fullest kind of life, one which is our calling, that perfectly fits what we are designed for – to love, because God first loved us.

We have this one shared purpose, and there will be as many expressions of it as there are human beings – no two people will live for and with God in the same way, but each may know what it is to love God and others with all that they are. Love, is to offer up all that God has given us in his service, generously sharing his gifts and our own experiences of his goodness in that unique path to which we are assigned by his grace.

A richer life..

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Lord, how numerous are my enemies! Many attack me.

Many say about me, “God will not deliver him”. But you, Lord, are a shield that protects me; you are my glory and the one who restores me.

To the Lord I cried out, and he answered me from his holy hill. I rested and slept; I awoke, for the Lord protects me.

(Ps 3.15)

Loved with everlasting love, led by grace that love to know, Spirit, breathing from above, thou hast taught me it is so. O this full and perfect peace! O this transport all divine! In a love which cannot cease, I am his and he is mine.

Heaven above is softer blue, earth around is sweeter green; something lives in every hue Christless eyes have never seen; birds with gladder songs o’erflow, flowers with deeper beauties shine, since I know, as now I know, I am his and he is mine.

Things that once were wild alarms cannot now disturb my rest; closed in everlasting arms, pillowed on the loving breast. Oh, to lie forever here, doubt and care and self resign, while he whispers in my ear, I am his and he is mine.

His forever, only his; who the Lord and me shall part? Ah, with what a rest of bliss Christ can fill the loving heart! Heaven and earth may fade and flee, first-born light in gloom decline, but while God and I shall be, I am his and he is mine.

(George Wade Robinson, 1838-77)

Yes, it’s another old song… and yes, the language is a bit dated, but indulge me and just read it – or even better, dig out a soundtrack on the internet and sing it! (The tune I know is called ‘Everlasting Love’, by J Mountain) These words have long been precious to me, expressing something which is good to remember as we walk through this sin-weary world, aware of pain and feeling our limitations. Like the psalmist, we can see threat on every side, and are aware of our mortality, the fear of pain, and of suffering. But, like the psalmist, we can look beyond the immediate, to the ultimate and real – to what Almighty God has revealed about himself, and his promises through Jesus Christ to all who trust in him for salvation. There I can put my assurance, and live with confidence through the trials that may come.

We do not merely inhabit a material universe, we live in the handiwork of an omnipotent, eternal and loving God, whose beloved children we are. As believers, we are encouraged to see all things as communicating truth about God to us – there truly is so much more to life than meets our eyes! There is an element of the sacral in all of life – that is, it can speak to us when we are willing to listen, of divine things. In the same way that the sacrament or celebration of the Lord’s supper speaks of eternal realities, so also can our experience of this life, our generous God’s gift to us, and his invitation to enter his joy.

To have faith, is to have a wholly richer life. I live in the present with my hope firm for the future; but I also have a view of the present that looks past the clamour of the immediate to invisible realities. To have faith is to believe that what God says is true – I can absolutely rely upon it. I live in a larger, deeper, more meaningful world than I can ever truly comprehend, glimpsing through it the love, power, creativity, artistry, mercy, justice and eternal nature of God. My joys are greater, because I know the one whose handiwork I am, and thus I know that I am of eternal significance.

Thank you my Father, for revealing yourself to me. Thank you for Jesus, my Lord, Saviour and friend by whose death my salvation is won, and in whose kingdom I now belong. Thank you for the many and varied ways in which you reveal your goodness, love, power and beauty to me each day as I live in this, your world. Thank you that sin has not been able to wipe your fingerprints off our beautiful world, or remove your signature from the galaxies. Thank you for the boundless refreshment which we, your children, receive as we recognise your sustaining power at work in this world, and delight in the beauty, power, and abundance of your gift. May I live ever more consciously in your presence, sharing all my joys and sorrows with you, and resting deeply in your everlasting arms. in the name of my beloved Jesus, Amen.