From Fear to Grace

This is also vintage, yet the final paragraph continues:

From Fear to Grace
I have discovered a new fear:  fear of being in His will.  Fear?  Because of the ramifications, implications, painful joys, joyful agonies, and anticipation of the One who is Love, and of love:  eternal yet intersecting and making clear the here and the now, every here and every now.
I must expand by and in grace lest I burst with realized joy of the immense certainty and comfortability that God is Love.
"That I may know HIM!"
At times I want to burst, for I am so small and He is so great.  His love is His glory.
I am destroyed (pride/ego) and defined (in His image, in His Spirit, in His body, in His bride) by the LORD Himself--known.  Love: never past tense--all is simultaneous to Him--praise His Name!
How He loves to hold a child, to teach it to walk and to be honest, to trust not blindly (blind faith of that kind ensnares, and we have not been called to bondage but to adoption), but with the Spirit enlightened and enlarged intelligence/understanding.
For me, faith is not a leap in the dark, emotional and irrational.  It is at first in the responsive affirmation of the Lordship of Christ--a leap from the dark.  It is thereafter exercised in thoughtful, studied, deliberate, prayerful response to Him as I am immersed in His Word and His Spirit.

In the doorway

This is another vintage piece but it seems timeless for many.

In the doorway
Have You five minutes, God?
Frankly, I have no more than that myself
What with this commitment and that.
I don't know how I get myself into these binds.
Sometimes, late at night
(Or early in the morning,
Depending on how you look at it)
I wonder why I'm so driven
To be all places
To do all thins.
I go and go, yet am still in the same place,
Seeing the same faces and walls,
Hearing the same voices and philosophies.
But, I guess that's life--
Or, is it?
I thought maybe You--
But I have to run,
I'm late now.

Meditations on Mercy Owed

Meditations on Mercy Owed

For Your mercy, Sovereign Father,
For Your sacrifice, Savior Lord,
For Your clarity of my need, Holy Spirit,
You deserve to be worshipped and adored.
For Your compassion, for favor unmerited, for grace,
Grant that I may show the same to others who by Your goodness bear Your name.
Adopted as we are by no merit yet by Your grace we shall inherit
All Your Son's possessions
And now perseverance and passion
Require that we show as You mercy
Unlimited in kind, grace, degreee.
Mercy for mercy,
Grace for grace,
Compassion,
Forgiveness,
Each sin erase,
Forget the debt,
Embrace the debtor,
Remember how great the debt you owed
The sacrifice the forgicing seed sowed;
With humility forgive then,
And seek to live forgiven,
With gratitude for
Mercy for mercy,
Grace for grace,
Compassion,
Forgiveness

July 1997 Prayer

I wrote this while waiting to have surgery scheduled.
July 1997 Prayer
Learning to live with uncertainty,
Taking my eyes off of me,
Striving for humility,
Teach me, Lord, to trust more fully.
Learning to live responsibly,
Living each day more fully,
Striving to do what's needed for me,
Teach me, Lord, to serve humbly.
Trusting You for each day alone,
Staying within that limited zone,
Quietly focused on what I must do,
Seeking to be more like You.
Striving to be more disciplined,
To love the Word and hate my sin,
Waiting on, and hoping for,
The One True Lord whom I adore.
Take me, teach me, mold me,
That I might one day be
Fully in the image
Of the One who died for me.

March 1986 Epiphany

March 1986 Epiphany
repetitive reflexes relax responsibly.
there is something to be said,
but who am I to say it?
simpler to self-surround
with written sound.
and on the Thursday last,
sitting at a blond round table
which was thoroughly engraved
with collegiate graffiti,
sitting
annotating THE DIVINE IMPERATIVE,
merely being
there
three months prior to
the fifteenth anniversary of my death
in Minneapois' General Hospital,
again the question:
why do I live again?
but
this time, and from this time,
answered:
because it is His good pleasure.

Two on contentment

Learning to be content
1.
Learning to be content,
To deal with change and
To be content,
Requires a lot of lessons,
Individual assignments,
And, sigh, discipline.
Learning to be content
Requires remedial work
At times.
Learning to be content
Calls for directing
Short term and long term goals
With/within God's parameters.
Learning to be content
Requires coming to grips with
And being gripped by
God As Sovereign,
As my Sovereign.
Learning to be content
Requires being conformed
To Him.
2.
Learning to cope with change
Requires commitment to
The Changeless One, and to
The Word given by
The Changeless One.
Learning to cope with change
Requires knowing and being known by
The Changeless One,
Learning requires a willingness to admit
I don't know/and to learn what I am, even if it is not
What I prefer.

My Testimony

My Testimony
My life as a Christian began the summer before I turned 9 years old when I experienced the "But God" of Ephesians 2.  Brought up in a truly Christian home, I knew enough of the Scripture to be aware that I was a sinner, and my behavior proved that too.  I had harbored resentment like no body's business,  After that, I knew my heart was new because my attitude changed.  I began to care more for others than for myself.
However, I spent years in uncertainty.  I went to various gatherings, made one recommitment after another.  Then I came to the conclusion that I just had to take God at His Word and move forward.  But some years after that, He graciously showed me that I had not put all of my faith in Him; I was still unconsciously counting on human resources, and when those were taken away, I crashed and burned.  Oh, did I.  But again God showed me grace, and He has continued to.  Each of the following reflects that.
25 years
4 March 1967-4 March 1992
A silver anniversary of learning
How tarnished and fragile and vacant,
In lieu of empty, E. was...and
Didn't know she was until
4 March 1967
When the world as she was sure it was
Crashed
Brought down by a quiet telling
Fait accompli
Brought down
A paper mache life--no, more substance than that, but
No basement--bricks perhaps but on sand...and
Razed so even the sand showed no marking of
E.'s residence there.
E.'s no longer at that address.  Her home is
Smaller and in a tellingly obscure neighborhood
Compared to halcyon sand dunes
Carved instead into rock
Baring that for base
Using the carvee stones
For walls, the roof still
Open to the elements
Habitable enough
And growingly grateful as
The Creator of the world is recreating E. and
E.'s world, reality, rock, solidly His.
20 years after 25 years
I can testify to the serenity of a life committed to
Living in humble dwellings,
Living carefully, prudently,
Not so rashly
Not so proudly
Of course there have been times of pride
Of course there have been times of rashness
But totally by the grace of God
I can testify to the serenity of a life committed to
Living in humble dwellings, carefully, prudently, praying as the Lord did,
Not my will but Yours be done, and
If the Lord wills we will live and do this or that.
I can testify to the overwhelming, overarching, undergirding grace;
Tis grace has brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.
The Fullness of Joy
What joy is mine
Because
God did what only God could
What I would not have done
What I would not have known
What I would not have believed
Had to be done
God
Who alone could
Did.
The Sovereign
Gave His Only Begotten Son
The Only from the Only
One
Who having been given, gave
And being the gift
My life did save
When I had no clue
He did what only He could do.
How awesome in the fullest sense
And how patient He when I an dense
How could I feel any other feeling
Or feel anything other than reeling
With joy and amazement and tears
As I commit to Him what is left of my years,
To obey as I trust
My heart beats as it must
Full of joy unlike I expected
Full of Him, by the Spirit connected
Full of joy for Grace Enfleshed
Full of joy in His life enmeshed
Full of joy for what's ahead
I bow to Him, our living Head.