Tag Archives: Poem

risk and reward.

25 Jan

what would it feel like to not care
to let the wind really blow this time
i mean really howl with strength
freely without a single obstacle to hinder its gust
not limited by barricades built around places we want protected and untouched
insecure walls shaking faulty with disbelief
let it blow I say
fiercely
kindly
violently
ruin everything in your path with a force so strong and unseen
that destruction and death would force a rebuilding
a rebirth of living beauty both new and pure alike

Living freely always takes a backseat to what’s comfortable and easy. Little courage means little risk, less of a struggle and more aiming at targets you know you can hit. Let’s go where the odds are better, where the end result is already known, so coming up short won’t even be in the equation. But what if those carefully built walls made to protect from rejection and disappointment were shaken a bit?! What if the risk and reward of seeing Gods faithfulness displayed, far outweighed the reward of seeing our standard formulas create the same results we’ve always seen?!

I don’t know what that kind of life would look like. What kind of shape and form it would take. I imagine that it would seamlessly resemble the life Jesus led here on the earth. The life we read about in black and red. The life that’s steadily become greatly unfamiliar and uncomfortable to mimic. Yet is the life we’re called to look, feel, and taste like, one freely filled with courage and risk.

Maybe we can’t just flip on the switch of courage and life be different from this moment on… but I do know, with utmost assurance, that grace will willingly strengthen our hearts, and steady our hands, so we can start tearing down these walls we’ve built.
brick by brick.
fear by fear.
till we’re saved from ourselves.

my psalm.

24 Aug

My Psalm, a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier – one of my favorites.

I mourn no more my vanished years;
  Beneath a tender rain,
An April rain of smiles and tears,
  My heart is young again.

The west-winds blow, and, singing low,
  I hear the glad streams run;
The windows of my soul I throw
  Wide open to the sun.

No longer forward nor behind
  I look in hope or fear;
But, grateful, take the good I find,
  The best of now and here.

I plough no more a desert land,
  To harvest weed and tare;
The manna dropping from God’s hand
  Rebukes my painful care.

I break my pilgrim staff, I lay
  Aside the toiling oar;
The angel sought so far away
  I welcome at my door.

The airs of spring my never play
  Among the ripening corn,
Nor freshness of the flowers of May
  Blow through the autumn morn;

Yet shall the blue-eyed gentian look
  Through fringed lids to heaven,
And the pale aster in the brook
  Shall see its image given; -

The woods shall wear their robes of praise,
  The south-wind softly sigh,
And sweet, calm  days in golden haze
  Melt down the amber sky.

Not less shall manly deed and word
  Rebuke an age of wrong;
The graven flowers that wreathe the sword
  Make not the blade less strong.

But smiting hands shall learn to heal, -
  To build as to destroy;
Nor less my heart for others feel
  That I the more enjoy.

All as God wills, who wisely heeds
  To give or to withhold,
And knoweth more of all my needs
  Than all my prayers have told!

Enough that blessings undeserved
  Have marked my erring track;
That wheresoe’er my feet have swerved,
  His chastening turned me back;

That more and more a Providence
  Of love is understood,
Making the springs of time and sense
  Sweet with eternal good; -

That death seems but a covered way
  Which opens into light,
Wherein no blinded child can stray
  Beyond the Father’s sight;

That care and trail at last,
  Through Memory’s sunset air,
Like mountain-ranges overpast,
  In purple distance fair;

That all the jarring notes of life
  Seem blending in a psalm,
And all the angles of its strife
  Slow rounding into calm.

And so the shadows fall apart,
  And so the west-winds play;
And all the windows of my heart
  I open to the day.

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