Who?

On that day, as evening drew on, Jesus said to his disciples:
“Let us cross to the other side.”
Leaving the crowd, they took Jesus with them in the boat just as he was.
And other boats were with him.
A violent squall came up and waves were breaking over the boat,
so that it was already filling up.
Jesus was in the stern, asleep on a cushion.
They woke him and said to him,
“Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”
He woke up,
rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Quiet! Be still!”
The wind ceased and there was great calm.
Then he asked them, “Why are you terrified?
Do you not yet have faith?”
They were filled with great awe and said to one another,
“Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?”
—Mark 4:35-41

Who is this that we follow
with no place to lay his head?
All other words seem hollow
when we think of what he's said.
We bring our little to him:
from it, all of us are filled.
And when the storm is brewing,
thenhe bids the winds be stilled.

We worry for tomorrow,
but he tells us of the birds.
We tell him of our sorrow
and he heals where we are hurt.
He fills our hands and baskets
from the crumbs we brought to eat.
We batten down the hatches,
and he calms the raging sea.

Who is he then, this Jesus,
but the Christ, the Son of God,
and still a human being
though he loves as we could not?
So we could not reach heaven,
'til he climbed into our boat
to sail with us forever
through the calm and through the storm.

Pieter Stalpaert – Christ sleeping during the storm – Private collection, Berlin, Germany, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1775811

Lilies

Learn from the way the wild flowers grow.
They do not work or spin.
But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor
was clothed like one of them.
If God so clothes the grass of the field,
which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow,
will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith?
So do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’
or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear?’
All these things the pagans seek.
Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.
But seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness,
and all these things will be given you besides.
Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself.
Sufficient for a day is its own evil.

—Matthew 6:24-34

Don't worry for tomorrow,
but let it go its way.
Sufficient is the sorrow
that comes in every day.

This one has got its evils
enough for you to meet.
Your sowing and your reaping
cannot delay its grief.

Then let your hands be open,
come laughter or come dread;
your reaping and your sowing
shall be your daily bread.

Consider well the lilies,
how gorgeous they appear:
Not all the threat of winter
can make them bow to fear.

Though to the year they've fallen
and faded into death,
they know the spring is coming,
and they shall rise again.

And so their blossoms open
that cannot last the day,
their hope forever sowing
beyond the leaves that fade.

François Barraud: Nature morte de fleurs aux lys, 1934 – http://www.sikart.ch/ImgRenderer.aspx?id=6004010, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10277705

Psalm 11

The proud their bows are bending
to shoot us in the dark,
but God is in his temple
and never will depart.

The wicked fix their arrows
and draw their bowstrings back,
but I will not despair, no,
though swift comes their attack.

For God sees all their violence
before they string their bows—
just as he sees the righteous—
and well their plans he knows.

They lift their swords for conquest
and strike the poor man door;
God seeks a different harvest
and bends their swords to plows.

If I fly to the mountains,
a terror-driven dove,
I'd not escape their hounding—
they can't escape God's love.

In God I take my refuge,
and they are in him, too.
In comfort or in terror,
we all will be made new.

Drawing a bow, from a 1908 archery manual By Maurice Thompson – The witchery of archery: a complete manual of archery. With many chapters of …, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8687330

Summer Thunder

When you rend the skies asunder
and the earth dissolves in fire,
will it sounds like summer thunder
when the wind is rising higher?
When we see your lightning flashing
as the clouds are turning black,
will we greet the rain with laughter
like it's mercy coming back?

As the angels weep for glory
and they gather 'round your throne
crying, Holy, holy, holy,
like cicadas' endless drone,
will you take a coal that's burning—
just a Texas summer day—
purify all that's unworthy,
set our hearts and minds ablaze?

Until then, O lord and savior,
let the mockingbird still sing;
let the chorus of cicadas
tell the summer you are king.
Though the grasses start to wither—
for they fade away like us—
we will praise you while we're still here,
'til your storm kicks up our dust.

Annual cicada. By Bruce Marlin – Own work http://www.cirrusimage.com/homoptera_cicada_T_linnei.htm, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=671173

Kingdom

Jesus said to the crowds:
“This is how it is with the kingdom of God;
it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land
and would sleep and rise night and day
and through it all the seed would sprout and grow,
he knows not how.
Of its own accord the land yields fruit,
first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.
And when the grain is ripe, he wields the sickle at once,
for the harvest has come.”
He said,
“To what shall we compare the kingdom of God,
or what parable can we use for it?
It is like a mustard seed that, when it is sown in the ground,
is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth.
But once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants
and puts forth large branches,
so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.”
—Mark 4:26-34

The kingdom of God's a little seed;
no one thought it came to much,
but it grows beyond what we can see
into everlasting love.

It fell to the ground: We thought it lost
like the leaves of yesteryear.
It woke and it grew—how, we knew not—
first the blade and then the ear.

When we cut it down the grain was ripe,
and it fell like one who's dead,
but we lift it up with rich red wine,
and we live on broken bread.

And the beggars from the byways eat
where the kings cast off their robes,
and the tax collectors take their seats,
and we all of us come home.

The birds of the sky will take their rest
where the branches spread out broad,
in the shade where the swallow builds her nest,
in the kingdom of our God.

Identifier: wildlifeoforchar00inge (find matches) Title: Wild life of orchard and field; Year: 1902 (1900s) Authors: Ingersoll, Ernest, 1852-1946 Subjects: Animal behavior Publisher: (New York London) Harper & brothers Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries View Book Page: Book Viewer About This Book: Catalog Entry By Internet Archive Book Images – https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14761113296/Source book page: https://archive.org/stream/wildlifeoforchar00inge/wildlifeoforchar00inge#page/n188/mode/1up, No restrictions, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43688808

Seen

In the shadows of the garden,
I've been hiding in the leaves.
If you see, how will you pardon?
I am Adam; I am Eve.
I am Jonah bound for Tarshish,
but the sea brings no relief.
I am stiff-necked and hard-hearted,
and I'm hanging like a thief.

When you call, how can I answer?
I am naked to your sight.
Do not look at me, O Master;
do not turn on me your eyes.
I have loved the works of shadows;
I have told the world my lies.
All my making is disaster,
and I cannot bear your light.

Further to the shadows driven,
yet you call me, and I come,
and the hands that I have riven
still reach out for me with love.
Like a Father for his children,
you have mercy on our dust.
All there is is this forgiveness;
this is all there ever was.

Fall of man Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie ;;;fot. By After Albrecht Dürer – National Museum in Warsaw, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=98886658

In Their Time

Lord, they who trust you stand like heights,
unshaken in your strength,
but sorrow comes in with the night
and rivers burst their banks.

And when the mountains fall like tears,
how shall we stand our ground?
Amid the locust-eaten years
what harvest have we found?

The field, the grain, the wine, the oil,
you sent us in their time,
and blood and pain and sweat and toil
around your gifts were twined.

Now we reach up with empty hands
to an unfeeling sky:
O, send you blessing on the land!
we beg with throats gone dry.

Somewhere there is a table spread
by one who knows our need—
the goodness of the wine and bread—
where we will sit and feast.

And more than bread and more than wine
will fill these empty hands.
You send your good things in their time:
Send peace to us again.

By Floris van Dyck – The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=150586

Fractured

Summoning them, he began to speak to them in parables,
“How can Satan drive out Satan?
If a kingdom is divided against itself,
that kingdom cannot stand.
And if a house is divided against itself,
that house will not be able to stand.
And if Satan has risen up against himself
and is divided, he cannot stand;
that is the end of him.
But no one can enter a strong man’s house to plunder his property
unless he first ties up the strong man.
Then he can plunder the house.”
—Mark 3:20-35

A house divided cannot stand:
The roof will kiss the floor.
When civil war consumes the land,
the kingdom stands no more.

Then how shall I, fragmented heart,
stand upright on my own?
No, I will take my fractured parts
and lay them at your throne.

Come, then, O king and conqueror:
That strong man bind in me.
What plunders me, O plunderer,
bind fast, and set me free.

Drive out the demons driving me;
the space that's left, come fill.
Knit me together, piece by piece,
that I may do your will.

Then I shall be your own, O Lord,
when I at last am mine,
one with the throng before your throne:
Your body, and your bride.

The Hanged Man’s House, Cézanne, 1873. By Paul Cézanne – Paul Cézanne, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=132795

Sacred Heart

Thus says the LORD:
When Israel was a child I loved him,
out of Egypt I called my son.
Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
who took them in my arms;
I drew them with human cords,
with bands of love;
I fostered them like one
who raises an infant to his cheeks;
Yet, though I stooped to feed my child,
they did not know that I was their healer.
—Hosea 11:1, 3-4

As if the first were not enough—
God's boundlessness in Mary's womb—
a second miracle was done:
Th'eternal made itself a room.

The ever endless love of God 
within a heart of flesh and blood,
the Logos entered human bonds,
the loves that draw us heavenward.

The infant on his mother's breast,
her eyes upon him filled with love,
a father's tender first caress:
Himself the wellspring drank thereof.

The friendship of his brothers, then,
the service he so oft received,
he turned in love to serving them:
He washed them and he bid them eat.

Now in his sacred heart reside
the many human loves he knew
within the ceasless ocean tides
of love divine and ever new.

As flowing out and flowing in
God's loves and our loves intertwine
within the heart that beats in him.
He walks these seas to reach our side.

Christ and the sacred heart, c. 1200 AD, East wall inside porch, St Mary the Virgin, Eryholme By Profsdmartin1 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=113970803

Exodus

Like Moses in the desert,
barefoot before the flame,
or Samuel in the temple,
I did not know your name.
But you knew mine and called it,
O God of Abraham:
I come now as you draw me
to touch the great I Am.

Not to some distant mountain—
I would not know the way—
yet stones are springing fountains
in my mundanest days.
I have no mystic vision;
no angels fill my sight.
You are more deeply hidden,
but still I have your light.

Yes, I have walked this desert
and fallen in its traps,
but guide me, O my shepherd:
I have no other map
than lines across your body,
like veins that show through skin.
They lead me to your heartbeat:
O, let me enter in.

Henry Daras : Le buisson ardent.Musée d’Angoulême, Charente (France). By JLPC – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18059038