Candles

Every anum on the mark we pour ourselves in wax again, and try to coat a candle that hasn’t yet been burned away. – And every year we see ourselves, the new improved—as we could be and think “this year we will not burn away or let the wax drip down.” – But coated candles […]

The Thunder of Reform

We see our fathers standing strong, the granite pillars of the church, who drove the nails into the door, who boldly drew the word and preached like thunder from a stormy sky. – We look around and mourn our loss— for “godly men have ceased to be,” and so we venerate the past and make […]

A Severe Delight

It rushes down the mountain: a cataract of sound a spray of mist and shade-light a roaring, silence round. – I pick my steps on slick-stones, a cat afraid of glass, to plunge my head beneath it and feel it—surging past – I feel the flecking wet sparks I step onto the ledge, but find […]

My Glass House

I walked my walk up to a house of glass and up the crystal stairs that gleamed and shined with sun. I walked up to a house that was my life, and hardly knew what I had done. – The walls were mirrored: reflecting, liquid worlds, that whirled around their world: my presence at their […]

A Psalm for Rescue From my Sin

Help me O Lord, for my soul shrinks away, my flesh is consumed with groaning. My body groans as an old man, my spirt, like a grieving mother. For round and round my thoughts have gone and never find a rock on which to rest, leaves that float, then dip and never touch the […]

Perfect Gift

I should have known You long ago— my heart was born with chambers void of blood, the walls just small and hidden to the eyes, but to the soul more endless than the stars. I should have felt Your absence in my tears— the ache of endings could have been a mold to pour my […]

Why We Pray

We do not pray because our God may fail to halt or change some great disaster grim. Nor yet because by long beseeching Him our words win out and our great faith prevail. We do not seek more prayers to tip the scale of heavenly action to our earthly whim, or nudge a grudging God […]

Morning Mercies

What have I Lord, but what Your grace has freely blessed to me? This patch of sunshine earth that spins, hurtling through space, the slowly dawning mind fuzz warmth of waking with the light, the crunch of buttered toast, the yolky run of breakfast eggs, the multi-swirl of colored leaves, the tingling sting of fall. […]

Layered

We’re layered, Lord, before Your face like bolts of cloth in folds of darker and of lighter shades. The sun bright side that people see and shake their head in wonderment at the shining, sun-flecked layers, made of light without a trace of shade. – We’re layered, Lord, before Your face, in bolts of unseen […]

All of You

Unto the word of God, my heart at last was moved. Before Your holy face, at length I knew my sin. I cried out to the Lord, released the crimes I loved. Your holy grace, like rain, has washed me pure within. – CHORUS Your work alone! And nothing that I do, before Your throne, […]