O praise the Savior for His love (II)

 Triolet

O praise the Saviour for His love
That took Him to a world of strife
Where humans elbow, kick and shove.
O praise the Saviour for His love
That came from peaceful scenes above
And caused Him to lay down His life.
O praise the Saviour for His love
That took Him to a world of strife.

God gives this Man a portion with the great

God gives this Man a portion with the great

And lets Him share the booty with the strong;

But who is great and strong? We celebrate

The favour that includes us in that throng.

For He has poured His soul out unto death

And seemed to men like one who had transgressed

Since on the cross He yielded up His breath

That we, the real transgressors, should be blessed.

 

He bore the sin of many on the tree

Yet pleaded for the men who caused His pain,

And waits in grace for sinners who repent;

And still in grace He intercedes for me,

And still in grace He challenges again:

Have you believed the message that God sent? 

(This concludes a twelve sonnet corona of sonnets about Isaiah 53; but I continue to consider that chapter.  I had it in mind before coronavirus was heard of but it seems appropriate.)

Views at Bridge of Allan

Filled with the fruit of travail of His soul

The Allan Water, Stirlingshire Scotland

Filled with the fruit of travail of His soul

The heart of Jesus Christ is satisfied.

The saints, the product of His work, extol

The excellencies of the Man who died.

And He will be their Teacher and their Guide,

Unveiling for them wonders of God’s mind;

They learn that He will have them by His side

Blessed, quickened, washed, instructed and refined.

 

He is the bearer of iniquities,

And they acclaim what He has done for them

While righteous service makes them celebrate;

Seeing how He heals their disparities

Through suffering and not man’s stratagem

God gives this Man a portion with the great.

Jehovah willed that Jesus should be bruised

 Jehovah willed that Jesus should be bruised

“He hath subjected him to suffering”!

What wonder that the man whom men refused

Should be the One God made the offering:

The trespass-offering for our offence,

Who bore our sins upon the cross of shame,

Whose sufferings for us were most intense

When taking for our sake both wrath and blame.

 

Inside the garden Christ has seen a seed:

Loving Him more than she could understand

Was Mary, whom His work of grace made whole;

Years after years of glory now succeed,

For all God’s pleasure prospers in His hand,

Filled with the fruit of travail of His soul.

As He was taken by constraining force

The Coast of Scottish Borders from Cove to Siccar Point

 

As He was taken by constraining force

And from all semblance of true equity

His captors were not those men thought as course,

But those marked by refined iniquity;

What generations spring from such a Man,

Cut off and having nothing in the land?

Of those who live?  He has no partisan

Or fellow who can truly understand.

 

So for the Jews’ transgressions He was struck

But all may cling by faith to Jesus’ work

Through which God is omnipotent to save;

But if the hand of Jesus was to pluck

Brands from the fire, and from the sins that lurk

The Lord must lie in His appointed grave.

When to man’s view the Saviour was oppressed

When to man’s view the Saviour was oppressed

And bitterly afflicted in their spite

No words of acrimony were expressed

By Christ while he endured man’s evil might.

He, like a lamb for slaughter, humbly went

The way through pain and grief by which they led;

They did not fathom why He had been sent

Or that they were the ones for whom He pled.

 

Thus as a sheep led to be shorn is dumb

He made no cry of anguish or complaint

But let the dogs and strong ones drive His course;

This, since they know the way by which He’d come

Brings out the admiration of each saint,

As He was taken by constraining force.

Although all we like sheep had gone astray

 Although all we like sheep had gone astray

And wandered from the shelter of the fold

Our great good Shepherd followed our bent way

Through crags and hollows that cannot be told:

Good Shepherd laying all down for the sheep

And showing thus the wonders of God’s grace!

Great Shepherd of the sheep whose grace will keep

All whom He reaches to behold God’s face!

 

God laid upon Him our iniquities:

The iniquities of all who trust in Him

And find in Him their Fortress and their Rest;

He suffered once for these propensities

Which shut up Eden by the cherubim

When to man’s view the Saviour was oppressed.

It was indeed for us He bore God’s stroke

 It was indeed for us He bore God’s stroke,

For our iniquities that He was bruised;

Against this Man God’s judgment-sword awoke

After His sinless body was abused

By human malice.  He who knew no sin

Has been made sin for us; the chastisement

Of or peace was upon Him. How begin

To tell the horrors of that punishment?

 

We had been wounded in the thrall of sin,

Leprous, and blind, and lame, and bruised, and wealed,

Under the power that gripped us every day;

And with a grace which we cannot begin

To understand, with His stripes we are healed

Although all we like sheep had gone astray.

Though He hath borne our sorrows and our griefs

 Though He hath borne our sorrows and our griefs

In sympathy, and empathy, and grace,

Rejected by the people and their chiefs,

Despised by those who struck Him on the face,

Taking His place beside the poor and weak,

Feeling the sadnesses of the bereaved,

Sharing the toil of those He came to seek,

Knowing the desolations of the grieved,

 

We thought Jehovah rightly punished Him,

That He was some transgressor of God’s law

On whom God’s righteous retribution broke;

We saw the pierced side, and each nail-pierced limb,

And though munificence of grace we saw

It was indeed for us He bore God’s stroke.

He was despised and left alone of men

 He was despised and left alone of men

Though He had come to share their sufferings,

And though He wished to shield them as a hen

Enfolds its frightened chicks beneath its wings.

Each day He walked here on His earthly way

Grief went with Him: grief for a fallen race,

Bonded to sin; grief for the pain that lay

Upon man’s life; grief for rejected grace.

 

For He was an embarrassment to man,

A corner-stone whom mankind must reject

Because He could not square with their beliefs;

They hid their faces, mocking rather than

Acknowledging the worth of God’s Elect,

Though He hath borne our sorrows and our griefs.

Have you believed the message that God sent?

Have you believed the message that God sent?        

Have you received His pure since-time-began

Prophets? Consider all that He has spent;

And since men disbelieved He sent His Son

To let you know His heart.  In grace He pleads

And shows you that He longs to fill your heart;

In Christ He has the answer to your needs:

Repent, go out from hence; depart, depart!

 

And has the Lord revealed His arm to you?

It is not shortened that it cannot save;

He will redeem you with a stretched-out arm

And what unbounded blessings will ensue!

He’ll ransom you from all that might enslave

Through One who came here with no worldly charm.

(Continuing thoughts on Isaiah 53, this is the first of twelve sonnets in a corona of sonnets; that is, the last line of one is the first of the other, reverting to the first line of all in the last line of the last sonnet.  The corona form is being used by the poet Malcolm Guite for the rather more ambitious project of writing a poem responding to each of the psalms.  The use of a corona is a response to the coronavirus which has so constrained us.)

VINE AND ALMOND

In the perfection of normality

The Vine grew up before the Father’s sight;

At every stage of His humanity

Christ’s features gave the Father’s heart delight:

The bud was the dependant little child;

The blossom was the enquiring subject boy;

The Man, as holy, harmless, undefiled,

Was straitened to ensure the Father’s joy.

But in one night the almond came to fruit -

One staff displayed fresh life amid dead staves;

In power which sin or death cannot dispute

One Man arose from myriads in their graves.

Christ’s resurrection is miraculous

And a new life gives joy to God - and us.

Another old sonnet rediscovered.

GENESIS 4: 4

Abel took of the firstlings of the flock
To sacrifice to God, since what is choice
Is what will make the heart of God rejoice
Despite a world where sin would dance amok.

Christ’s excellence, which answered to God’s thought,
And thus evoked the loving heavenly voice,
Made Him the offering without taint or spot.

28/01/2020

GENESIS 3: 15

But sin infected Eden: what a fall
Was there!  But there the serpent learned he’d feel
The righteous rigour of the Victor’s heel,
Because Jehovah’s hand was over all.

But he would bruise the heel of Woman’s Seed:
Christ’s sufferings were intimate and real
To liberate the grace that meets man’s need.

GENESIS 2: 21-23

It was not good that Man should be alone

God saw, and knew that He must sow and reap;

And Adam saw, resulting from his sleep

His wife, derived from him in flesh and bone.

Thus Christ now has what answers to His heart,

Though both God’s counsels and His ways were deep,

In one prepared to be His counterpart.

This is the first of a few contemplations on the death of Christ as foreseen in the early chapters of Genesis.

PHINEHAS AND THE ARK

To pious minds all seemed to fall apart

But Phinehas remained before the Ark,

Though others' lanterns faltered into dark

And coldness crept across the nation's heart.

Dan turned to images of human art;

Benjamin flicked and guttered to a spark;

To pious minds all seemed to fall apart

But Phinehas remained before the Ark.

Their enemies all sought to seize a part

Of Israel, each voracious as a shark;

Would all be lost? Tossed like a feeble barque,

Israel seemed ignorant of star or chart ‑

But Phinehas remained before the Ark.