Retreat Poem 2 (of 2)

Followers of a Party-Trick God (based on John 11)

This happened so the glory of God may be revealed.
Lazarus broken,
his family distraught.
A hope deferred to the future met that day.

This happened so the glory of God may be revealed.
How obscene is that?
Children backed over by cars,
lives wrecked by disease,
families broken,
townships swamped.
The towers of our predictable, scientific world come tumbling down.

This happened so the glory of God may be revealed.
Your church scandalously divided,
squabbling to own those who can only be Yours,
excising themselves from Your world.

This happened so the glory of God may be revealed.
A world mistaking knowledge for understanding,
reducing wonder to statistics,
humanity to commercial value,
and beauty to symmetry.

Lord, do wondrous things through us,
the church cries out each day.
Fill us with your power and your glory,
so that we may point to you.

Lord, do wondrous things through us.
Pour us out for the hurt and unloved.
Expose us in our fragile humanity.
Lead us to die for those who hate us.

No, Lord, can't you just let us be?
Allow us to devise wise techniques and programs,
granting deliverance safely through statistics and strategy.
Mine be the glory.

Your faithfulness will not let us go.
Your love draws us in,
there's nothing left for us.
So, let us walk to Jerusalem with you.

Lord, replace our pride with your compassion,
substitute our control with your love.
Shake, shatter and rebuild us in your image once more,
so that your glory may truly be known through us.

Retreat Poem 1

Dry bones (A reflection on Ezekiel)

Go and speak the word of life to the dry bones.
What a ludicrous concept!
Pouring one's life out for that which has died,
existing more for what it was than it is.

Go and speak the word of life to the dry bones.
Speak words of hope and joy to the tired, the fragile, the discourages.
"If only I were twenty years younger..."
But Go and speak the word.

Help me to see you in the dry bones
That which lasts when all else has faded away
Molecular buttresses and niches for life
A potential that only you can realise.

Help me to see you in the dry bones
the quiet faithfulness of the inobtrusive attender
the questing desire for a community that has gone
the fact they have been gathered by You.

Help me to see you in the dry bones
A holy man with the tax collectors and prostitutes
A body broken by the machinations of the world
Life being thrown away for dry bones.

Fill me with your word of life
Allow me to dwell in your love:
Not as a place I go to visit,
but that which I abide in wherever I am

Fill me with your word of life
may it overflow from me on the plains of my life.
Do with it as you will,
and may your will be done in me.

Gandhi's seven deadly sins

One of my uncles gave me a book of 365 ways to change the world as my Christmas present.



I have been reading it each day in order to see how the agents of change in the secular world express their hopes and relating it to Christian discipleship.



Today's reflection was on the seven deadly sins (and also the seven virtues and righteous actions) out of the medieval Christian tradition, and an encouragement to drop one. I don't want to reflect too much on this, but on Mahatma Gandhi's seven deadly sins which were listed in the middle:

• Wealth without work


• Pleasure without conscience


• Science without humanity


• Knowledge without character


• Politics without principle


• Commerce without morality


• Worship without sacrifice

I found this particularly interesting as the first six of these take on the commonly accepted virtues of the modern secular world and suggests that they need moderating values to stop them becoming vices (as I believe they do), and I suspect most members of religious groups would have no problem agreeing with them. Then comes the call from Gandhi on religion, worship that does not change your life in a real and practical fashion can easily just become a claim that God is on your side - and that leads to dangerous territory indeed.

What do you think? Can you think of anything to add to Gandhi's list?