A Sunday Doxology
In the
fog, filth, and floundering
of a world weary of itself
there is yet hope
for you never grow tired.
You never
grow weary.
Thank you.
☀️ Hope
Tag: hope
☀️ Time
A Sunday Doxology
I am not a physicist.
I am not capable of even an attempt
at reducing time into complex formulas
and many fellow non-physicists
would scoff when I acknowledge you,
Creator God
for separating light from dark,
for ordering time into units you called
day and night
for establishing their rhythms into
seasons and years.
Time, after all,
belongs to the realm of physics
as something difficult to define
less difficult to measure as
we mark seconds minutes hours weeks
organize into zones
readjust to ‘save’ daylight
worry over waste
fret over scarcity
wish for speed or slowness
according to our whim and fancy,
seeking control when
time is ultimately
yours.
You are the one who has taken eternity,
difficult to define and measure,
taken it in your hand
and set it in the human heart
and even with its tug, its longing, its hope,
we cannot begin to fathom all
you have done
from ancient times to what is still to come.
From everlasting to everlasting,
You are God.
Fine.
☀️ Light
A Sunday Doxology
Light as a myriad of luminous dots
scattered like seeds across a fertile sky
coalesces into an orange red blue
glow low in the east,
pushes back night’s shutters,
releases day
glorious and bright,
points to the greater Light,
the True Light
that darkness cannot overcome.
All praise to you,
O Light of the world,
the Light of life.
🌿Joy
My perennial sweet peavine
Lathyrus latifolius
didn’t grow last year, left a vacancy
beneath the rustic twig arbor —
one more loss among many others.
But with spring’s first thaw
I found tender tendrils
of hope
that now reach far above
the arbor to peek their sweet pink
blossom faces in my window.
I smile back.
☕️ On Walking
A Saturday Caesura
While out on a walk one evening this week, I saw a little girl and her dad at the street corner ahead. She was learning about stop-look-listen before crossing. When they began walking, the dad’s stride was relaxed and casual, solid and sure compared to the skip-bounce tiptoe half-run of the daughter’s effort to keep up. He held her hand, providing an anchor that kept them together even though her child pace could never match his adult one.
As I watched them, I tried to remember if as a child I had ever felt the need to always be half-running just to keep up with the adult world. Even if I didn’t then, I think I do now. . . and it is exhausting.
I had another walking experience this week. It was a long walk, one that generally gets labelled as a hike, but at its core, it was still walking. Once we bushwhacked (a particularly challenging kind of walking) our way into the alpine, we could clearly see the final route to the summit. Striped of their cloak of trees and shrubs, naked mountain ridges can be deceiving, looking either easier or harder than they actually are. To one member of our group, this route looked daunting. She stopped, looked . . . and stayed stopped. Anxiety set in. Then doubt. In the end, the thought of not reaching the summit after working so hard to get this far loosened the fear enough to get her feet moving again.
So we encouraged her and we walked. No skip-bouncing half-running, just steady and sure walking even when the wind whipped around and through us. Look-step. Look-step. I walked and she walked right behind me, not looking left or right or up ahead– just looking at my feet. When I took a step forward on the slope, she stepped right behind me. Anchored this way to possibility rather than fear, she made it to the summit one step at a time across all the space that felt too steep, too rocky, too impossible.
So I’ve been thinking about how we walk through life and who needs us to be steady and sure. About who needs an anchor when the pace is beyond reach and the way seems too much of everything scary and daunting and impossible. The truth? Maybe there is the odd occasion where I am somehow able to be those things for someone else, but mostly (always) I’m the needy one.
The Lord makes firm the steps of the one who delights in him; though he may stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with his hand. Psalm 37:23-24
☀️ Rest
A Sunday Doxology
To the God who offers rest
from the weary weight
of doing striving becoming,
from the surprising burden
of emptiness—
Your invitation to come,
to come
to come
to find
rest for our souls,
lingers
with a lengthening sweetness,
with a compelling hope,
with the undeserving promise
of your gentle, humble presence.
☀️ In the Morning
A Sunday Doxology
Praise God for a world of wonder
where morning never fails to dawn,
where evening fades and brings its rest,
where creation sings out with joy
and stirs within my weary heart
hope, trust, worship, and gratitude
for your mercies new each morning,
your steadfast love and faithfulness.
Oh how great is your faithfulness.
🌿 Wind
I worked to the rush of wind today;
it was steady and unrelenting in ways
I was not.
Does the wind ever wish it could just
pause,
know the singularity of a particular
place?
Or must it always be a wanderer on its
way somewhere
reminding us that change
is both unrelenting and inevitable,
never impossible.
That there is a way from west to east
from here to there,
from this to that,
from now to then.
☀️🌿 Overflowing
A Sunday Doxology
Praise God, the good Shepherd
Who leads to springs of living water,
Who leads beside still waters.
Water that seeks and settles
In lowest and deepest places.
Water that fills and floods, overflowing
With tears and hope and grace
and joy and love and thanksgiving.
🌿I Wonder
I wonder if the disciples woke up that morning
exhausted from anxious days
heavy with grief
burdened with shame
numb with despair.
I wonder it they had talked and talked and talked
trying to make sense
trying to recall kingdom words they had barely understood
now beginning to settle into something like hope
but if true
suggesting a future far greater than their yearnings
for a return to what was.
I wonder if the only thing they knew with certainty
was that the sun had risen
on another day.
Life continued.
I wonder what they felt the moment they grasped
this truth
in its greatest and most profound sense.
