Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee

Jesus, the very thought of Thee
With sweetness fills my breast;
But sweeter far Thy face to see,
And in Thy presence rest.

No voice can sing, no heart can frame,
Nor can the memory find
A sweeter sound that Jesus' name,
The Saviour of mankind.

O hope of every contrite heart,
O joy of all the meek,
To those who ask how kind Thou art,
How good to those who seek!

But what to those who find? Ah, This
No tongue nor pen can show;
The love of Jesus, what it is
None but His loved ones know.

Jesus, our only joy be Thou,
As Thou our prize wilt be;
In Thee be all our glory now,
And through eternity.

From the Latin 12th century, translated by Edward Caswall (1814-1878)

Jesus, Lover of my Soul

Jesus, lover of my soul,
Let me to Thy bosom fly,
While the nearer water rolls,
While the tempest still is high.
Hide me, O my Saviours, hide,
Till the storm of life is past;
Safe into the haven guide,
O receive my soul at last.

Other refuge have I none;
Hangs my helpless soul on Thee.
Leave, ah! Leave me not alone;
Still support and comfort me.
All my trust on Thee is stayed,
All my help from Thee I bring;
Cover my defenceless head
With the shadow of Thy wing.

Thou, O Christ, art all I want;
More than all in Thee I find!
Raise the fallen, cheer the faint,
Heal the sick, and lead the blind.
Just and holy is Thy name,
I am all unrighteousness:
False and full of sin I am,
Thou are full of truth and grace.

Plenteous grace with Thee is found,
Grace to cover all my sin;
Let the healing streams abound;
Make and keep me pure within.
Thou of life the fountain art,
Freely let me take of Thee;
Spring Thou up within my heart;
Rise to all eternity.


~Charles Wesley (1707-1788)

Pursuing Love

Pursuing Love of God,
A deep grace so profound:
He woos and wants me.

The dark is for my good,
To teach me trust and calm:
He moulds and makes me.

(c) Petrel Marijn 2008

Trust

Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love, for in you I trust. Make me know the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.
Ps. 143:8

But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God. I trust in the steadfast love of God forever and ever.

Ps 52:8

For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O Lord, from my youth.

Ps 71:5

The only way we can ever be happy in our relationship with God is to trust him completely. We must be able to say with Job (13:15a), "Though he slay me, I will hope [alternately translated "trust"] in him." Doubt and anxiety shows our lack of trust in God--our lack of surrender to His Will. We must lay ourselves in His hands in trust, obeying His desires for our lives. In order for God to make us effectively, we must be soft and pliable to His hand; if we are hard and inflexible, He will have to soften us, breaking and melting us to His specifications.
Too often we have a hard time trusting that God's will, God's timing is right, and like Abraham and Rebecca we want to get our own hands in there to shape the mold of our lives. Too often we complain against the Master Artisan--"You're making a mistake there, God, I should be painted a different colour, I need a handle here, and I really don't think that blobby bit there is going to do me much good..." All our denial of His vision for our lives will make it more difficult for us to finally to submit to His will.
Our doubt, anxiety, and refusal to trust completely in God is just as much sin as disobeying His commands. By refusing to trust that God knows what He's doing, we imply that He is untrustworthy, i.e., fallible, and in so doing, deny His very divinity.
Failure to trust God is very serious indeed!!

The Finish Line

Be"Leaf "

Our Charge is Love

The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.

1 Timothy 1:5

Allure my Heart

Allure my heart, O Lord,
To Thy own desert land;
Be Thou its surest ward,
And cage me in Thy hand.

All haggard, I, and flee
Thy mews I would, yet still
Thy Word my creance be,
And man me to Thy will.

Rebellious, I might fly
Against Thy jesses, Lord:
Oh, hood and hold me nigh,
And make of love a cord!

(c) Petrel Marijn 2008

Prayer

Another old Hymn/poem from The Hymn Book, No. 98:


Lord, be thy word my guide,
In it may I rejoice:
Thy glory be my aim,
Thy holy will my choice,

Thy promises My hope,
Thy providence my guard,
Thine arm my strong support,
Thyself my great reward.

~ Christopher Wordsworth (1807-1885)

Treasures in the Wilderness

More Old Poetry

It is strange how vulnerable I feel posting even old poetry... I guess it still strikes too close to heart.

Truth

Behind my hands
my face lurks
tentative, scared, scarred.
Laughter is its shield
quivering in the silence,
every nerve jangling, shaking.
True expression is dangerous;
it is too real, too exposing,
too naked me:
one should never be without clothes. (it's unnatural)
Childhood freedom?
Gone with every don't and shouldn't.

I have my faces
each used on different occasions,
some serving more than one purpose
Not all truth.

Anxiety

I can feel my writhing spirit
wringing its hands
in desperation.
Trying to trust,
but failing miserably,
no matter how it tries.
My stomach clutches
and twists in sympathy.
Promises, promises--
Unanswered? Or just delayed?

Patience seems to be
sickening for something--
Panic perhaps?

Old Poetry

Something I wrote a long time ago--but I was browsing through old files and found it. I had forgotten...

This gluttony
tiny pinpricks
to fill a
gaping whole--
the empty place
where I go
when loneliness
overwhelms
and top it up with
more excess nothing.

it drags
hanging down
weighing on my back
the hole is not satiated
with mere filling
there is more
to this than
comfort
and
substitution.

life, me, and
everything
is just not enough.
Take me, ravish and seduce me
and don't tell me until
it is much, much too late
I need more
than food and clothing
I need-want love and
only your love
satisfies my
craving.

Musings

I was sitting in front of my computer just now, hoping to write something, something, hopefully, poetic. The thought has been hovering around the edges of my brain that all I have been doing lately is posting other people's words and none, really, of my own. Even my devotional journal exhibits this same tendency at the moment. As a person who sets a lot of stock in self-expression and creativity--even if it is just in my interior monologue--I've been feeling cut off from my usual means of self-expression; I haven't felt the fire to write for some time (and by write I mean seriously write, not "just" journalistic-style entries). I haven't been writing prose, I haven't been writing poetry. I'm in the middle of a nasty flu/head cold thing that leaves me hardly able to talk, let alone sing--which I really wanted to do this morning and couldn't. I feel stopped up--literally and figuratively--as though I am hardly able to move through the mud I like to call my brain. I'm hoping that this mud will turn out to be fertile silt, but until it does, I feel unexpressed.

It struck me, however, that maybe sometimes we aren't meant to express ourselves. Perhaps sometimes we are meant to be silent, not speak for ourselves. Perhaps we serve a different function at these times, acting as echoes for other people's self-expression. We take in the efforts of others' creativity and reflect it out into the world again. We act as sound boards, resonators, amplifying the expressions of others. Perhaps, we, by taking in other people's art, make it bigger.

It made me wonder if maybe there are implications in this for our spiritual lives. Perhaps there are times, even seasons, where we act primarily as God's echoes, not His messengers. Perhaps the times when we feel stifled, confined, "hedged in," are the times when the expressions of the great Creator--His Word, His Love, His Everything--are reflected off our lives into the lives of others. And, maybe, the reason we do not see the ripples in the pond is because we are the stones thrown into the water.

Go to Dark Gethsemane

Go to dark Gethsemane,
Ye that fell the tempter's power;
Your Redeemer's conflict see;
Watch with him one bitter hour;
Turn not from his griefs away:
Learn from him to watch and pray.

See him at the judgement hall,
Beaten, bound, reviled, arraigned;
See him meekly bearing all;
Love to man his soul sustained.
Shun not suffering, shame, or loss:
Learn of Christ to bear the cross.

Calvary's mournful mountain view;
There the Lord of glory see,
Made a sacrifice for you,
Dying on the accursed tree.
"It is finished," hear his cry:
Trust in Christ and learn to die.

~James Montgomery (1771-1854)

To be a pilgrim

Who would true valour see,
Let him come hither:
Here's one will constant be,
Come wind, come weather.
There's no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
His first avowed intent
To be a pilgrim.

Whoso beset him round
With dismal stories
Do but themselves confound:
His strength the more is.
No lion can him fright,
He'll with a giant fight,
But he will have the right
To be a pilgrim.

Since, Lord, thou dost defend
Him with thy Spirit,
He knows he at the end
Shall life inherit.
Then fancies fly away!
I'll fear not what men say,
But labour night and day
To be a pilgrim.

~John Bunyan (1628-1688) and others

Dear Lord and Father...

Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our foolish ways;
Reclothe us in our rightful mind;
In purer lives thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise.

In simple trust like theirs who heard,
Beside the Syrian sea,
The gracious calling of the Lord,
Let us, like them, without a word
Rise up, and follow thee.

O sabbath rest by Galilee!
O calm of hills above,
Where Jesus knelt to share with thee
The silence of eternity,
Interpreted by love!

Drop thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of thy peace.

Breath though the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire:
Speak through the earthquake, wind and fire,
O still small voice of calm!

~John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)

Fire of God

Fire of God, thou sacred flame,
Spirit who in splendour came,
Let thy heat my soul refine,
Till it glows with love divine.

Breath of God, that swept in power
In the pentecostal hour,
Holy breath, be thou in me
Source of vital energy.

Strength of God, thy might within
Conquers sorrow, pain, and sin:
Fortify from evil's art
All the gateways of my heart.

Truth of God, thy piercing rays
Penetrate my secret ways.
May the light that shames my sin
Guide me holier paths to win.

Love of God, thy grace profound
Knoweth neither age not bound:
Come, my heart's own guest to be,
Dwell for evermore in me.

~Albert Frederick Bayly

The Triune God: Fuel for our Souls

"God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing."

C.S. Lewis from Mere Christianity

Elizabethean songs

Author of light

Author of light, revive my dying spright,
Redeem it from the snares of all-confounding night.
Lord, light me to thy blessed way:
For blind with worldly vain desires I wander as a stray.
Sun and moon, stars and underlights I see,
But all their glorious beams are mists and darkness being compared to thee.

Fountain of health, my soul's deep wounds recure,
Sweet showers of pity rain, wash my uncleaness pure.
One drop of thy desired grace
The faint and fading heart can raise, and in joy's bosom place.
Sin and death, hell and tempting fiends may rage;
But God his own will guard, and their sharp pains and grief in time assuage.

by Thomas Campion

So Beauty on the Waters Stood

So Beauty on the waters stood,
When Love had sever'd earth from flood,
So when he parted air from fire,
He did with concord all inspire,
And then a motion he them taught,
That elder than himself was thought,
Which thought was yet the child of earth,
For Love is elder than his birth.

by Alfonso Ferrabosco

Welcome What Comes

Whatever comes, let's be content withall:
Among God's Blessings, there is no one small.

~Robert Herrick from Noble Numbers

The Desires of Your Heart

Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Ps 37:4

Many people, including myself, have taken this, and other similar scriptures as a promise that God will fulfil us by granting us the things we want. We want so many things, and so often our wants are quite legitimate biblically-speaking: godly children, a Christian spouse, a job where we can work as God intends us, etc. We seem to take such verses as Ps 37:4 as promises from God that if we do what he wants, He'll give us what we want. However, I was reading through verses on the heart, and when I got to this one, I was suddenly struck by a new reading of this verse—at least, it was suddenly new to me. Thinking back to all the reading I have done, the sermons I heard, etc., it is not really a new concept at all, but I felt it was important to reorient this verse in my own heart, and hope that it will help shed new light in other people's hearts as well.

Too often we try to use scripture against God. We take verses promising that obedience will be rewarded, and try to use obedience to get what we want. This is obviously a works-oriented approach to Christianity, and one that it is all to easy to slip into. If God demands obedience, and promises to reward our obedience, it becomes very easy for our sinful humanity to begin demanding His reward on our own terms. When we do not seem to get our “deserved” reward for our obedience to God's will, we get angry or hurt, and begin to believe the same lie that Satan used to tempt Eve: we think that God is holding out on us. We cry, “I'm doing everything He asked (to the best of my ability): why doesn't He give me what I want?”

Why doesn't He give me what I want? “What I want” is not important; what God wants is.God does not have an immense tally sheet in heaven where He checks off our obedience against our disobedience and if obedience wins we get rewarded. One sin, no matter how “small,” is enough to send us to Hell. One sin blots out any of the good we may think we can do. Our obedience is not the measuring line by which we are rewarded, because God demands perfect obedience and we, no matter how we try, cannot ever do His will perfectly. Christ's obedience is the measuring line—and it is Christ's desires that are fulfilled.

“Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” This is where the eyes of my heart were suddenly opened. This text is not an equation where “Delighting myself in the Lord” = “Getting what my heart desires.” No, it promises something far better. In this text, God promises to give us the desires of our hearts. He is not promising to give us want we want, but rather promising to give us desires that come from Him. His desires. Not our Wants, the things we think we “need” or the things we lust after, but His desires. “Delighting in the Lord” = Being Gifted with the desires of God. Our little Wants become even smaller as we immerse ourselves, delight ourselves in the Lord. And as our Wants shrink, He gives us holy Desires to take their place. We must not keep a death-grip on our Wants, or try to manipulate God into giving us what we think we need; instead, we must, by the Holy Spirit's power, surrender our small Wants and pray to be drawn by God and given His desires.

Jesu, joy of man's desiring,
Holy Wisdom, Love most bright;
Drawn by Thee, our souls, aspiring,
Soar to uncreated light.
Word of God, our flesh that fashion'd,
With the fire of life impassion'd,
Striving still to truth unknown,
Soaring, dying, round Thy throne.

Through the way where hope is guiding,
Hark, what peaceful music rings!
Where the flock, in Thee confiding,
Drink of joy from deathless springs.
Theirs is beauty's fairest pleasure;
Theirs is wisdom's holiest treasure.
Thou dost ever lead Thine own
In the love of joys unknown.

Christina Rossetti

I think these poems speak for themselves. I "discovered" the first one on Rajaton's Sanat CD, and it resonated in my heart so much that I had to put it here. Then, I found the others and more...

Weary in Well-doing

I would have gone; God bade me stay:
I would have worked; God bade me rest.
He broke my will from day to day,
He read my yearnings unexpressed
And said them nay.

Now I would stay; God bids me go:
Now I would rest; God bids me work.
He breaks my heart tossed to and fro,
My soul is wrung with doubts that lurk
And vex it so.

I go, Lord, where Thou sendest me;
Day after day I plod and moil:
But, Christ my God, when will it be
That I may let alone my toil
And rest with Thee?


Dost Thou not Care?

I love and love not: Lord, it breaks my heart

To love and not to love.
Thou veiled within Thy glory, gone apart
Into Thy shrine, which is above,
Dost Thou not love me, Lord, or care
For this mine ill?—
I love thee here or there,
I will accept thy broken heart, lie still.

Lord, it was well with me in time gone by
That cometh not again,
When I was fresh and cheerful, who but I?
I fresh, I cheerful: worn with pain
Now, out of sight and out of heart;
O Lord, how long?—
I watch thee as thou art,
I will accept thy fainting heart, be strong.'

Lie still,' 'be strong,' to-day; but, Lord, to-morrow,
What of to-morrow, Lord?
Shall there be rest from toil, be truce from sorrow,
Be living green upon the sward
Now but a barren grave to me,
Be joy for sorrow?—
Did I not die for thee?
Did I not live for thee? Leave Me to-morrow.


Long Barren

Thou who didst hang upon a barren tree,
My God, for me;
Though I till now be barren, now at length
Lord, give me strength
To bring forth fruit to Thee.
Thou who didst bear for me the crown of thorn,
Spitting and scorn;
Though I till now have put forth thorns, yet now
Strengthen me Thou
That better fruit be borne.
Thou Rose of Sharon, Cedar of broad roots,
Vine of sweet fruits,
Thou Lily of the vale with fadeless leaf,
Of thousands Chief,
Feed Thou my feeble shoots.


After This the Judgement

As eager homebound traveller to the goal,
Or steadfast seeker on an unsearched main,
Or martyr panting for an aureole,
My fellow-pilgrims pass me, and attain
That hidden mansion of perpetual peace
Where keen desire and hope dwell free from pain:
That gate stands open of perennial ease;
I view the glory till I partly long,
Yet lack the fire of love which quickens these.
O passing Angel, speed me with a song,
A melody of heaven to reach my heart
And rouse me to the race and make me strong;
Till in such music I take up my part
Swelling those Hallelujahs full of rest,
One, tenfold, hundredfold, with heavenly art,
Fulfilling north and south and east and west,
Thousand, ten thousandfold, innumerable,
All blent in one yet each one manifest;
Each one distinguished and beloved as well
As if no second voice in earth or heaven
Were lifted up the Love of God to tell.
Ah, Love of God, which Thine own Self hast given
To me most poor, and made me rich in love,
Love that dost pass the tenfold seven times seven,
Draw Thou mine eyes, draw Thou my heart above,
My treasure ad my heart store Thou in Thee,
Brood over me with yearnings of a dove;
Be Husband, Brother, closest Friend to me;
Love me as very mother loves her son,
Her sucking firstborn fondled on her knee:
Yea, more than mother loves her little one;
For, earthly, even a mother may forget
And feel no pity for its piteous moan;
But thou, O Love of God, remember yet,
Through the dry desert, through the waterflood
(Life, death) until the Great White Throne is set.
If now I am sick in chewing the bitter cud
Of sweet past sin, though solaced by Thy grace
And ofttimes strengthened by Thy Flesh and Blood,
How shall I then stand up before Thy face
When from Thine eyes repentance shall be hid
And utmost Justice stand in Mercy's place:
When every sin I thought or spoke or did
Shall meet me at the inexorable bar,
And there be no man standing in the mid
To plead for me; while star fallen after star
With heaven and earth are like a ripened shock,
And all time's mighty works and wonders are
Consumed as in a moment; when no rock
Remains to fall on me, no tree to hide,
But I stand all creation's gazing-stock
Exposed and comfortless on every side,
Placed trembling in the final balances
Whose poise this hour, this moment, must be tried?—
Ah Love of God, if greater love than this
Hath no man, that a man die for his friend,
And if such love of love Thine Own Love is,
Plead with Thyself, with me, before the end;
Redeem me from the irrevocable past;
Pitch Thou Thy Presence round me to defend;
Yea seek with piercèd feet, yea hold me fast
With piercèd hands whose wounds were made by love;
Not what I am, remember what Thou wast
When darkness hid from Thee Thy heavens above,
And sin Thy Father's Face, while thou didst drink
The bitter cup of death, didst taste thereof
For every man; while Thou wast nigh to sink
Beneath the intense intolerable rod,
Grown sick of love; not what I am, but think
Thy Life then ransomed mine, my God, my God.

Good Friday

Am I a stone and not a sheep
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy Cross,
To number drop by drop Thy Blood's slow loss,
And yet not weep?

Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;

Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky,
A horror of great darkness at broad noon—
I, only I.

Yet give not o'er,
But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock.

Look HERE for more of Christina Rossetti's
Devotional Poems. 

The Spiritual Wilderness

The Spiritual Wilderness
Quote of article, a benediction:

The Holy Three encircle you
The Saving Three release you
The Eternal Three keep you
May the loving Three caress you and work in you,
In your loved one,
In your dark,
In your day,
In your pain,
In your seeing,
In your blindness,
In your journey,
In your busyness,
In eternity.

Amen.

Why Wilderness?

Why Wilderness?

A Table in the Wilderness?

Can God Spread a Table in the Wilderness?
Sermon by John Piper November 22, 1981

Another Wilderness Perspective

I found an interesting article which involves/discusses the wilderness experience as a result of becoming a Christian (or even re-dedicating one's self). I found this a welcome reminder that sometimes the wilderness experience can be a result of a positive lifestyle change as well as resulting from a place of barrenness in our physical and spiritual life which is a symptom of sin.

http://www.christian-faith.com/forjesus/wilderness-experience

And another link with yet another perspective:

http://www.peterhessbooks.com/newsletter/downloads/Vol-2-No-8.pdf

Life in the Wilderness

Just doing some camera "doodling."

Interesting discovery

Interesting tidbit of information: In Hebrew (the Torah), Leviticus is titled Vayikra (“and God called”) and Numbers is Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”)--much more descriptive titles than our English ones.

Never Waste Your Pain

Never Waste Your Pain

Dear Lord...
Please grant that I shall
Never waste my pain; for...
To fail without learning,
To fall without getting up,
To sin without overcoming,
To be hurt without forgiving,
To be discontent without improving,
To be crushed without becoming more caring,
To suffer without growing more sensitive,
Makes of suffering a senseless, futile exercise,
A tragic loss,
And of pain,
The greatest waste of all.

-- Dick Innes

I found this poem in a random google search on Hosea 2:14. I found it interesting that the poem was in a sermon preached on my birthday six years ago, since I've taken this verse as my "own".

Sermon on Hosea 2:14 By: Rev. Adrian Dieleman. This sermon was preached on April 28, 2002

www.trinitycrc.org/sermons/hosea02v14.html