How is it that today alone
I look on what has always been?
Such grace was never to me shown—
I looked before, but had not seen.
But now I hear the call to start
in every breath the silence brings.
How did the darkness on my heart
become the shadow of your wings?
Each moment asks me once again
if I will be as you have said;
each pulse that beats, I breathe, “Amen,”
and I will do 'til I am dead.
If only I had always heard;
if only I had always seen—
but now you've given me your Word
that ever shall be and has been.
O God, do not take him from me,
but let me ever hear that voice
that stings more fiercely than the bee,
more sweetly than all honeyed joys!
But if you do, if he should go,
then honed and hollowed, still I'd say
what I have known, I yet will know.
Though light were flown, I see the day.
To the tune KINGSFOLD (“I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say”):
When taken in my sin I stand
before you, sinless Christ,
and angry stones fill every hand
while I must pay the price,
you kneel with grace I can't demand
amid the outraged cries:
You write my sins upon the sand,
confounding all the wise.
Why do you write in sand and clay,
in lines that cannot last,
what we would carve in stone for aye
and ever hold it fast?
Amid the traffic of the day
you write our sins gone past;
the wind will blow them all away
before a stone is cast.
O saving Christ, remember not
these letters or my sin,
but wipe away each line and jot
that mars my soul within.
And when I am in evil caught,
when I would stand condemned,
be then the mercy I have sought
and make me clean again.
The days are coming, says the LORD, …I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts.
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Amen, amen, I say to you,
unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies,
it remains just a grain of wheat;
but if it dies, it produces much fruit.
John 12:20-33
One for today’s readings, about hearts and seeds, to the tune O WALY WALY (“Take Up Your Cross”):
The days are coming, says the Lord,
when God will plant within our hearts
the seed itself, the living Word,
in barren gardens, worked and scarred.
Bring on those days, we pray, O God:
Take all we are and e'er have been.
Dig out the stones and break the sod;
transform us into Eden's green.
For you alone can make good ground,
that, when the springtime sounds its call,
within our hearts might love abound
if that one grain of wheat should fall.
If it should fall, if it should die,
if it should lie within the earth—
O God, may you be glorified
when grain to springing green gives birth!
Let grace and mercy in us toil,
a brand new Eden here to start,
then plant your seed within our soil.
Oh, write your Word upon our heart!
You promised joy would come with dawn
and sorrows would be done—
How long will midnight linger on,
and when will morning come?
At nightfall, weeping entered in;
Lord, when will it depart?
When will the day at last begin,
the sun rise in my heart?
When will my grief be changed to joy,
my mourning into dance?
O Savior, come! The night destroy,
your new-made day advance:
that day when you will hear us call
and death will be no more,
when burdens from our shoulders fall,
and we shall sleep secure.
For now we watch and weep the night
and pray for it to end.
When will the stars fade from the sky
and hope begin again?
Come, Lord! Come, Lord! No more delay!
Come quickly, light from light!
Come, dawning of eternal day
and end this endless night!
To the tune PASSION CHORALE (“O Sacred Head Surrounded”):
The snares of death surround me,
the anguish of the grave.
The grief I fled has found me;
I drown in sorrow's wave.
Yet search me, Lord, and sound me:
My very depths you brave
to hear my cry resounding:
“Come down, O God, and save!”
Come down, and there embrace me
and take me as your cross,
then in your mercy raise me
and hold me ever close.
Though sin and shame deface me,
see me as once I was:
Let not my sins erase me;
Lord, let me not be lost!
And when you long have held me
and all your love poured out,
new grief in me compelling
to see you in your shroud,
yet then new hope upwelling
shall keep my head unbowed
and I shall stand, still telling
the love the sought me out.
How long, O Lord, shall we live on in exile,
torn from our roots that sheltered in your ground
where hope was green and love was rich and fertile,
until we turned and burned it sere and brown?
How long until our suffering is worthwhile
and all the sabbaths that we lost are found?
Restore us, Lord, as streams within the desert,
and bring us back to reap again in joy.
We sowed in tears, but may it blossom ever,
this rising hope and reason to rejoice:
We shall return and leave our homeland never,
when you reach down in answer to our voice.
For you, O God, are loving and forgiving,
and you will gather all your had dispersed.
Then we shall bring the harvest of your giving
and offer you the hope you gave us first:
the springing green, the lost now found and living,
the ripened gold that from our hearts has burst.
Take me merely as your hireling;
God, I cannot be your son.
I have squandered my desiring,
wasted all that you had won.
When you call, my life requiring,
nothing good will I have done.
No, my child, my lost and fallen,
no, my love returned from death.
How your weeping eyes are swollen!
How you sob with every breath!
Come, your sins no more recalling;
feast upon the fatted calf!
How is this, my Lord and master,
that a servant wears your ring?
I can make your love no answer,
to your service nothing bring.
Give me duties, O my tasker:
I will fail in everything.
No, my child, my found, my lifted:
Turn no longer from the feast.
Everything to you I gifted—
see, the gifting never ceased!
And when all is sorted, sifted,
still I'll love the very least.
Take me, Father, as your own, then;
take the little I can give.
Bring me once more to our home, then—
never, never will I leave!
Let me be forever known there
and in endless mercy live!
One for today’s readings, to the tune ST. THOMAS (“Down In Adoration Falling”):
Let my body be your temple;
consecrate this mortal stone.
Merchants, thieves, and moneylenders
rule where you should reign alone.
Come, O Lord, in grace and splendor:
Drive them out and claim your throne!
Cleanse me of those graven idols
which obscure your own true face.
So long have I served your rivals,
tried your glory to replace—
Come, O Lord, and purify me:
Fill me with your love and grace.
False my work and vain my labor;
you alone, O God, can build.
Let this temple find your favor,
be with your own Spirit filled.
Come, O Lord, my body's savior:
Work in me your holy will.
And, when not a stone is standing,
when this temple falls in death,
take my body in your hand, then:
Breathe in me an endless breath.
Come, O Lord, all things commanding;
Raise my body to new life.
Lord, I have seen the barren rock
break open with a living spring,
and raised a cry of joy and shock
to see the desert turning green.
Then why, why do I turn aside
when barren ground surrounds my road?
When deserts stretch out, yawning wide,
why do I fear and lose my hope?
I know too well not every stone
bears in its heart the springs of joy.
Beside those rocks I stand alone,
and all my pleading is but noise.
But still, the road before my feet
turns neither to the left nor right.
What comfort can I hope to meet
beneath this sky's relentless light?
Be for me, saving Christ, the rock
that rises in a weary land.
Give me a shadow, cool and dark,
to shelter in from sunlit sand.
And there, if I have found you, Lord,
if I have followed you at all,
the river of your mercy pour,
the rain of comfort on me fall!
For see, the winter is past, the rains are over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of pruning the vines has come, and the song of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines, in bloom, give forth fragrance. Arise, my friend, my beautiful one, and come!
Someday the winter will be past;
the rains will be long gone,
and by the shadow that we cast
we'll recognize the dawn.
The day will break as ne'er before.
The earth made bright with dew
will shine with daylight flooding o'er,
and all will be made new.
Not as the days are now, engloomed
and crouched beneath the storm,
but filled with light that searches tombs
and turns the cold hands warm.
The blossoms bursting from their graves,
the doves that break in song
are forging something bright and brave,
though winter lingers on.
For spring will come—it has to come—
and we will sing again.
Arise, oh my belovèd one,
and wait with me 'til then.
Picture sent to me by my mom of a robin in her backyard during the great Snowmageddon, February 16, 2021.
Kate Bluett 
