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A Sunday-poem by Amy Carmichael:

                 Spun-gold

We cannot bring Thee praise like golden noon-light
  Shining on earth's green floor;
Our song is more like silver of the moon-light,
  But we adore.

We cannot bring Thee, O Belovèd, ever,
  Pure song of woodland bird;
And yet we know the song of Thy least lover
  In love is heard.

O blessèd be the love that nothing spurneth;
  We sing, Love doth enfold
Our little song in love; our silver turneth
  To fine spun-gold.

A Sunday-poem from Jessica Powers about our God who is a God of prodigality:

But Not Without Wine

“You are drunk, but not with wine.”  (Isaiah 51.21)

O God of too much giving, whence is this
inebriation that possesses me,
that the staid road now wanders all amiss
and that the wind walks much too giddily,
clutching a bush for balance or a tree?
How then can dignity and pride endure
with such inordinate mirth upon the land,
when steps and speech are somewhat insecure
and the light heart is wholly out of hand?

If there be indecorum in my songs,
fasten the blame where rightly it belongs:
on Him who offered me too many cups
of His most potent goodness–not on me,
a peasant who, because a king was host,
drank out of courtesy.

“Everything that happens to you is for your own good.  If the waves roll against you, it only speeds your ship toward the port.  If lightning and thunder comes, it clears the atmosphere and promotes your soul’s health.  You gain by loss, you grow healthy in sickness, you live by dying, and you are made rich in losses.  Could you ask for a better promise?  It is better that all things should work for my good than all things should be as I would wish to have them.  All things might work for my pleasure and yet might all work my ruin.  If all things do not always please me, they will always benefit me.  This is the best promise of this life.” (Charles Haddon Spurgeon)

There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient.
Marilynne Robinson in Gilead

There are a thousand thousand people on any given day who cannot think of one sufficient reason to live this life.
There are a few thousand who will decide this is their last day.
There are a few who say goodbye.

It is enough for me to find just one reason to live today.
It is enough for me to help someone else find just one reason today.
One is enough.
Fully sufficient.

Some mornings it’s hard for me to choose which gem to share with you.  .  .  but this is the one that I finally decided upon.  It’s another from Amy Carmichael.  She looks at how Jesus always had hope for His disciples, and so this is true for us as well. She’s commenting on Romans 15:13: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.

     These words have often helped us to go on hoping for those who were disappointing us.  But this morning they came differently to me.
     ‘Ye are they which have continued with Me in My temptations.’  A few hours later — ‘Could ye not watch with Me one hour?’  Very soon after — ‘All the disciples forsook Him and fled.’
     ‘They have kept Thy word’ …

Come, perpetual joy.
Come, unwitherable wreath.
Come, O purple raiment of our Lord and God.
Come, girdle, clear as crystal and many-coloured with precious gems.
Come, inaccessible refuge.
Come, Thou whom my poor soul desireth and hath desired.
Come, lonely One, to the lonely one–for lonely I am, as Thou canst see.
Come, Thou who hast become my longing, for that Thou hast ordained,
that I must needs long for Thee whom no human breath has ever reached.
Come, my breath and my life.
Come, joy, glory, and my incessant delight.

~Symeon the New Theologian

Come, true light,
Come, eternal life,
Come, secret of hiddenness.
Come, delight that has no name.
Come, unutterableness.
Come, O presence, forever fleeing from human nature.
Come, everlasting jubilee.
Come, light without end.
Come, awaited by all who are in want.
Come, resurrection of the dead.
Come, mighty one, forever creating, recreating, and renewing with a mere wave of Thy hand.
Come, Thou who remainest wholly invisible, for none ever to grasp or to caress.
Come, Thou who flowest in the river of hours,
yet immovably stayest above it,
who dwellest above all heavens,
yet bendest to us who are bowed down.

~Symeon the New Theologian

to be continued . . .

It’s Sunday and time for me to share a poem.  I love this poem by Luci Shaw.  I think it’s one of the first I ever read of hers and always comes back to mind this time of year.   I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.  I think it’s one that benefits greatly from being read aloud.  (There are shades of Hopkins in this poem.)

May 20: Very Early Morning

All the field praises him/all
dandelions are his glory/gold
and silver all trilliums unfold
white flames above their trinities
of leaves all wild strawberries
and massed wood violets   reflect his skies–
clean blue and white
all brambles/all oxeyes
all stalks and stems lift to this light
all young windflower bells
tremble on hair
springs for his air’s
carillon touch/last year’s yarrow (raising
brittle star skeletons) tells
age is not past praising
all small low unknown
unnamed weeds…