TOUCH

When I was far from light
Within this world of lies
A Man called Jesus touched my eyes
And gave me sight.

My leprous wounds were seen:
Men heard my plaintive plea
A Man called Jesus handled me
And made me clean.

Bowed down, I had to wait,
Powerless to show my face:

A Man called Jesus touched in grace
And made me straight.

Beyond man to forgive,
Fixed in what all men fear,
A Man called Jesus touched my bier
And made me live.

27/04/12

LUKE: WOMEN

Elizabeth

From that old tree at last
Comes one fruit; sweet to the eye,
Tart to the taste.

Mary

From its first flourishing that tree
Bears the most exquisite
Fruit.

Anna

Who would have thought
That antique tree would burst
In one last tumult of blossom?

Luke 7

Even in its wilderness
Light has touched tha tree;
Myrrh weeps from its wounds.

Luke 8

From their substance
These trees produce varied fruits -
What an orchard!

Luke 13

That old bent shrub
- A miracle -
Stand now tall and straight.

Luke 23

What untimely autumn
Afflicts the leaves of these trees
To gold and bronze?

Luke 24

Out of winter
Does that almond blossom
Drink the new-risen Sun?

OPENED HEAVENS

Heaven had observed
Thirty secret years; perfection
In a Man.  Heaven saw
The Accomplisher of righteousness
Baptised.  Confident in Him
And what He would achieve the heavens
Were opened to Him.

That Man now stood, glorified:
Accomplished righteousness, heaven's
Celebration.  But on the earth Stephen
Suffered - suffered but beheld
The heavens opened.  Steeled
By his view of the Son of Man
His dying breath initiated
The address, "Lord Jesus".

And it came to Peter's vision
From the opened heavens, a vessel
In heaven's grip: including,
Cleansed and made righteous
The persons who would enliven
Heaven's view, the vessel
Of a heavenly character.

When the vessel has been caught up,
Responsive to the Lord's voice,
The heavens will be opened.  The Accomplisher
Of righteousness will go out
To execute righteous judgement -
His saints following Him clad
In white, fine, pure linen.

EPISTLE

Christ was the living
Epistle of God on earth;
He manifested God.






I repeat that the impressions that I convey are gained from those more spiritual than me!

EVERY GRACE

Every grace that is
In Christ is in every saint:
Only not developed.

TRUST

The sinner who puts
His trust in God has Jesus
For his comforter.

GROUNDED

Our hope, our blessing,
Our safety, are all grounded
On the atonement.

ENTIRELY ONE

Christ was entirely
One with the Father, and thus
Could represent Him.

RONDEL

He will be with His saints;
His saints will be with Him,
Beyond the present grim
Restrictions and complaints.

Recall, amid restraints,
When all around seems dim:
He will be with His saints;
His saints will be with Him.

Already He acquaints
Our souls with joys that brim;
More blest than cherubim,
As drawn by love's constraints,
He will be with His saints;
His saints will be with Him.

TO THE HOLY SPIRIT

Blest Spirit, we delight to chart
Thine operations in God's ways,
Spreading God's love within our heart,
Evoking thus responsive praise.

Thy power, blest Spirit, is displayed
In quickening those who are elect
And forming, till there is portrayed
"Love in the Spirit" in effect.

Coming on Jesus as a dove,
Or coming on Christ's church to be
With us, exemplify Thy love
And move our hearts in love to Thee.

HIS OWN

There was a Man, who came
To His own, desiring companionship:
But the holiness of His nature
And His people's fallen condition
Precluded it.  Though the Father was
With Him, among men He was alone.

But after the good seed was sown
Something sprouted; growth persevered in
The blade and, at least, the ear
Till, despite their falls and cavils,
He could disclose secrets, and enjoy
Companions He could call His own.

He suffered to atone - in the darkness
And solitude.  Never in the history
Of time and eternity had a man been
So utterly alone: No spark
From God.  A perfect work was done
And a perfect love shown.

Raised from the dead He is
The Living Stone.  To Him congregate
Ourselves also as living stones,
Formed, in the Spirit, with measures
From Him - that through such a house
His excellencies may be fully known.

There is a Man who comes
To His own - as they are gathered
To His Name, with true hearts
In a world still rejecting
The Lord Jesus.  They announce His death
Till the time when He takes His throne.

But the Lord will not come
Alone; though alone He will tread
The wine press of wrath.
His companion, forever bridal,
Shall be with Him: her shining
As a crystal-like jasper stone.

16 April 2012

MARY

Why wife to a carpenter? Although
The royal blood pulsed, the rights
Of monarchy existed, your husband
Crafted in wood; each day's labour
Used energy, skill and mind. Nothing
Derived from you or him imbued
That Child of whom you were mother.
But it pleased God in His ways to choose
The ambience you both provided; righteousness
Of your unwilling‑to‑expose husband,
Subjection of your spirit, soul and body.
You observed perfection in childhood,
Pondered signs and growth, retained
Thoughts, memories and affection till
You could act as repository to His church.

ELIZABETH

The old man chanted his words,
Recited his prayer ‑ you were the real
Priest: believer in your prayer,
Griever in your lack, conceiver of
The chosen harbinger, favoured receiver
Of the mother of your own Lord.
And what a son! Of women you
Hold distinction as the bearer of
The greatest born of women. John,
Zenith of one dispensation, star
Of another issued from your tenderness
To harshness of desert, rejection, prison;
To ecstasy of friendship with the Bridegroom.

BATHSHEBA

Your first husband morally greater,
All ways a mighty man, your loss
And your dead child led you to value,
Especially, peace, your son Solomon;
Jealously you protected his interests,
Provoking your enfeebled king to grant
Immediate access to the throne.
Skilfully you chose subtle allies,
Priest, prophet and the commander
Of the king's bodyguard, men
Fitted by a great king's service
To inaugurate the new regime.

HANNAH

Out of the anguish and your consolation
You shaped that: an experience
Carved into verse. Reiteration
Merely you disdained, distilling
History, agony and resultant joy
A psalm ‑ which I can use.
Beyond the actual, your abstract truth
Was timeless, while your sense of time
Pervaded this as your other craft ‑
Making, annually, Samuel's coat,
A mother's intuition guiding your measures.
You had no doubt how, each year
Spent in Jehovah's house, he would grow.

DEBORAH

Others might have designated you
Warrior, prophetess, or leader but you
Chose this name ‑ a Mother
In Israel. Perhaps, as a robbed lioness
You fought, as maternally caring cajoled,
As example, led; until you produced
What constituted the true Israel ‑ those
Loving Jehovah who could have might
Like the rising sun; who go on
Straight highways in the restful conditions
You motherly activity had assured.

RACHEL

When he remembered ‑ Jacob ‑,
No longer a young man in a hurry,
To pace himself to the pace of the slowest,
Children or lambs, was it you,
Rachel, whose shepherdess care
Finally had influenced him? You
Inspired him first to breach custom,
Roll the stone away. His ewe,
Cherished in his bosom, you transferred
His affection to Joseph, gave Jacob
His fruitful bough, rooted by where
He first encountered you, by the well.

SARAH

You had some husband ‑ dragging you
From civilization and comfort to dwell,
Season after season, in a tent. Neither
Sand deterred nor fertility halted:
Always he loved his vision ‑ which you,
With a wife's common sense, laughed at.
Did long miles and years drain your strength,
Perils of the wayside and in king's palaces
Fray your nerves? Finally, with nothing
But faith to cling to, you found strength
Nature could not provide. With Abraham
You saw Isaac ‑ Christ's day;
And insisted that he alone remain.
If feet still trudged arid or arable
Heart had its peace ‑ its sought country.

SOLDIER

By my feet my hammer;

At my side my spear;

Over me blood and water;

In my hand a treasure ‑
   A seamless garment.

ABRAHAM

You had felt the land's tilth
Ooze lushly, the land's desert
Sand your feet, its barren rocks
Graze and bruise. You tent's pegs
Had beaten into arid and arable
Ground of your promised land. Never
Had your share dug deep. Although
All was your own your only possession
A grave plot. But there was the possession
Gained from earth, dust and stone
On the hardened feet of you, the wanderer.

And possession of faith. Not human hope against hope
Nor the dull grasping of the disturbed thought through the crust
Of scepticism. But the certainty of trust in the Lord Almighty
‑ The admirable demonstration of bold credulity.
You, like God, saw the things that are not as existing.

Nomadic, but still a builder,
You cast earth, heaped rocks,
Not forms of grand appearance
But created from the textures you knew ‑
Altars. Rough but vital
They stand as milestones on your pilgrimage
Marking, guiding, smoking:
Each altar drew you nearer,
Higher, to become friend of God,
Ready approacher ‑ a priest's service.

ALTARS

Earth has no pretensions;
We have access through a Man
found in Adam’s figure,
perfect in that condition.

Stone is permanence:
A Man out of death
beyond the power of man -
and let none attempt to inflict
human improvements.

But for an altar in God’s tabernacle
God requires wood -
Acacia wood: Man
Sustaining.

Copper endures the heat,
While the acacia wood -
Man in the place of judgement -
Sustains the judgement.

Gold displays the fulness
While the acacia wood -
Man in the place of glory -
Sustains the glory.

COMMUNICATING

He communicates
To us His nature and makes
Of us His delight.


As with other posts I cannot claim the thought as original.  That is just as well..

TONE

Those who - in spirit -
Dwell in the heavenly country
Take the tone of it.

7/4/12

SINLESS

If Christ is our peace
He's as sinless for us as
He was in Himself.

LIFE

The Lord would rather
Give up His holy life than
God's favour for us.


03/04/12

THE SYSTEM OF LOVE

From a heart rich with mercy, grace and love
The Father's purposes for us display
His grand desire to have before His face
A glorious, loved and loving company.
Thus through unbounded grace His own Son came
To save us, and, more preciously, to lead
Those justified - and powerful in His Name -
Up to the Father as a holy seed.
And in the Father's presence we can be
Not only known as sons but cause to feel
That since the Son has died to set us free
Our sonship is not nominal, but real.
For grace gives, crowning all that mercy starts,
The Spirit of adoption in our hearts.

DAVID

Pre‑eminently David was a shepherd:
One with a heart his flock could all rely on.
He was no hireling but prepared to jeopard
His life to fight against the bear or lion
To lead his flock ‑ or lead his men to Zion.
But The Good Shepherd, Jesus, supersedes:
In love He suffered and in grace He leads.

Into the valley, humble yet defiant,
Confident in the way Jehovah led,
David went down to battle with the giant:
A skilful sling-stone smote Goliath dead
And David carried off his severed head.
Through greater depths and through exceeding woe
The Lord has quelled a more injurious foe.

Rejected and despised, a wanderer,
David found refuge in Adullam's cave;
And needy souls who gathered to him there
Because their debts were great or needs were grave
Found that he had ability to save:
Christ, who had once no place to lay His head
Is Saviour now as risen from the dead.

As God's anointed David had dominion
That ranged from the Euphrates to the Sea;
Hundreds of judgements hung on his opinion,
Myriads of minions hung on his decree
While Israel was glorious and free.
But Christ will shoulder just administration
As King of every people, tribe and nation.

To build the house of God was his desire
And under God he was its architect;
It was most worthy that he should aspire
To serve God in a place he would erect
But God refused to give his will effect.
Only through Christ could God acquire a place
To dwell with men in righteousness and grace.

David went in to sit before the ark
To hear Jehovah in complacency;
He laid aside his realm's and household's cark
And heard the promise God had to convey:
Sustained by this he rose and went his way.
But in God's presence our High Priest remains ‑
All things by love and vigour He sustains.

Whether the waters by his feet were calm
Or he was bruised by torrents of oppression
From each experience David formed a psalm.
He raised a hymn to God through his confession
And found a song as carried through depression.
But Christ now leads a heavenly company
Surrounding Him to praise eternally.

HIS SAINTS

They have enrolled in that grand company

"The dead in Christ": the saints who gave God pleasure

From Abel onward; who served faithfully,

Spoke often of Him, and became His treasure.

They laboured for the Lord and for His own

As He Himself delighted to record

Till in His love and wisdom they have known

The blessedness of dying "in the Lord".

Jesus they loved and spoke with day by day

Since He had laid His life down for His sheep:

Enduring death, He took death's sting away:

He touched them, and through Him they are asleep.

Behold He comes! They will arise to meet

With all His own at that exalted tryst

And in transformed, immortal bodies greet

Our glorious Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.