We don’t get to see the face of the old woman
Headscarfed
And sat on a bed.
She faces the closed net curtains
And ponders what, I wonder?
What goes on
Headscarfed
And sat on a bed.
She faces the closed net curtains
And ponders what, I wonder?
What goes on
in the mind of an old woman
Whose years carry memories
Like water in a jar.
Whose years carry memories
Like water in a jar.
If we could see her face
Would the lines, the lips, the eyes
Speak of the daughter
She hasn’t seen in 20 odd years
And the grandchild she was carrying
Whom she never saw born or grow up
But whom she never gave up looking for
And whom despite the lies and deception of the authorities
She finally found.
She looks worn out
By a world
That could make
So many Young woman and men
In the Argentina of 1978
Just Disappear
Under a cloud of political deceit.
Her experience alone
Should be enough to make us understand,
If we didn’t already know it
That there is something deeply wrong
With the world of human beings.
Something politics can’t fix,
Something advertisers can’t camouflage
Something money can’t buy off
Something entertainment can’t block out
Something travel can’t escape.
From Beijing to Khandahar,
From mortgage boom to credit crunch,
Be it on the plastic swamped beaches of Bali
Or the bullets fired in the backstreets of Basra -
There’s something deeply wrong with our world.
From the madness of medical doctors
Who want to destroy democracy
By driving 4 by 4’s into Glasgow airports terminals
To the insanity of an American president
Who wants to defend democracy
By torturing information out of people -
The world we live in is far from right.
From the struggle the western world has
With obesity
To the struggle most of the world has with poverty
From the squabbles we have in our families
To the selfishness we struggle to stop
Eclipsing our own heart
Something in the way of being human
Is badly broken.
For those of us
Tired of the cynical rhetoric employed by politicians
For the person who knows
That however beautifully they say it
The Billboards only lie,
Psalm 120
Offers itself like a protest song
Sung by a people moving in another direction
Taking an opposite way.
We sing it when we can no longer stomach the deceit
At the heart of the world we live in;
The sham that we can make our own peace
As though God does not exist,
As though God has not come into the world
In the life of Jesus Christ
To offer us the only peace worth making.
The peace that’s formed on a cross
The peace that escapes from a tomb
The peace that makes
Forgiveness,
Friendship,
Truth,
Grace,
Blessing,
Welcome
Acceptance,
Courage,
Hope
More than just words on our lips
But realities growing out of our living.
The peace of Jesus Christ.
Psalm 120
Is a song for those
Ready to begin a new journey,
Away from the pretence
That with a little more education,
With a higher standard of living,
With greater honesty among politicians
With more time to travel
Or indulge our pet hobbies
It can all be fixed.
“Woe is me that I am an alien in Meshech
That I live among the tents of Kedar,”
Says the psalmist.
Whenever we are fed up with the life
We see on TV
Whenever
We read the paper
And say to someone can you believe that,
Whenever the truth dawns on us
That the world we have pitched our tent in
Seems like a world full of strangers
Intent on biting and scratching until they get what they want.
Then we are ready
To make psalm 120 our own.
It has been said
And it’s usually the case
(It certainly was for me)
That until we get fed up with the world as it is
We won’t develop an appetite
For the world of God’s grace.
Until we realise
The world as it is
Just isn’t right
That no amount of human ingenuity
Will make it better in the future,
We are reluctant
To give up the falsehood
Of trying to make our own peace.
The psalmist says:
“Too long have I lived among those
Who hate peace.”
But who in their right mind
Hates peace?
Well that depends
On how peace comes.
In our house, among the children
The price of peace depends
On who says sorry first.
And even then, sorry's are only grudgingly given,
They would rather hold onto their little resentment
Than make the effort to be at peace.
A sorry is not the road either willingly wishes to take.
True peace
The bible claims,
Is only made in relationship
With the God who made and loved me,
And for some
That’s not a truth they are willing to hear.
And so a world is often made
Where God is kept outside
From work desk and playground
Holidays planned, homes bought, meals eaten.
And any peace to be made
Will be sought without the help of God
I once got tired of that world.
And left it.
Have you?
Maybe
If we are to find God’s peace
We each of us
At some time
Need to reach the point of the psalmist
Whose experience in this world leaves him feeling
Like a stranger
In a hostile crowd.
“Lord”
The psalmist says
“Lord”
God is addressed here
Not as an idea,
Or a vague possibility
But is spoken to
As a person who is there.
The psalmist speaks the name he’s always known
As if he is also known to that name
He says it
With a deep, intense, sore, sustained longing
In the way a child shouts out
For her mother in the next room
Knowing she will be heard by the one she calls.
And under the burden
Of what life has become
The psalmist cries calls out:
“Deliver me, o Lord
From lying lips
From a deceitful tongue.”
Christians have a name for that deliverance.
A name
For the specific journey
Of leaving behind the life
That tries to make its own peace
Swapped For the life
That receives God’s peace instead.
We call that journey repentance.
Repentance
Is the way we leave the fantasy
Of the life we are fed up with
For the peace and truth
We find in God.
If you want to get to the Allen’s farm
Then you have to go along manse road
There’s no other way to drive there.
No other road that will take you there.
If we want to embrace
The truth of God
That brings us to peace
We must go by the way of repentance
No other road
Will take us there.
But what is repentance?
Well Eugene Peterson puts it best for me
And I’ll quote it at length:
“Repentance is not an emotion. It is not feeling sorry for your sins. It is a decision. It is deciding that you have been wrong in supposing that you could manage your own life and be your own god; it is deciding you were wrong in thinking that you had or could get the strength, education, training to make it on your own; its deciding you have been told a pack of lies about yourself, your neighbours and the world.
And it is deciding that God in Jesus Christ is telling you the truth.
Repentance is the realisation that what God wants from you and what you want from God are not going to be achieved by doing the same old things, thinking the same old thoughts. Repentance is a decision to follow Jesus Christ and become his pilgrim in the path of peace. It puts a person in touch with the reality God creates.”
If we want to say with the psalmist
I am for peace
That is the peace of God
Then we are invited
To walk along the only road
That leads to that peace
By the way of repentance.
Repentance invites us
On the kind of Journey Kallistos Ware describes
When he writes:
“To repent is to look, not downward at my own shortcomings, but upward at God’s love; not backward with self reproach, but forward with trustfulness. It is to see, not what I have failed to be, but what by the grace of Christ I can yet become.”
Would the lines, the lips, the eyes
Speak of the daughter
She hasn’t seen in 20 odd years
And the grandchild she was carrying
Whom she never saw born or grow up
But whom she never gave up looking for
And whom despite the lies and deception of the authorities
She finally found.
She looks worn out
By a world
That could make
So many Young woman and men
In the Argentina of 1978
Just Disappear
Under a cloud of political deceit.
Her experience alone
Should be enough to make us understand,
If we didn’t already know it
That there is something deeply wrong
With the world of human beings.
Something politics can’t fix,
Something advertisers can’t camouflage
Something money can’t buy off
Something entertainment can’t block out
Something travel can’t escape.
From Beijing to Khandahar,
From mortgage boom to credit crunch,
Be it on the plastic swamped beaches of Bali
Or the bullets fired in the backstreets of Basra -
There’s something deeply wrong with our world.
From the madness of medical doctors
Who want to destroy democracy
By driving 4 by 4’s into Glasgow airports terminals
To the insanity of an American president
Who wants to defend democracy
By torturing information out of people -
The world we live in is far from right.
From the struggle the western world has
With obesity
To the struggle most of the world has with poverty
From the squabbles we have in our families
To the selfishness we struggle to stop
Eclipsing our own heart
Something in the way of being human
Is badly broken.
For those of us
Tired of the cynical rhetoric employed by politicians
For the person who knows
That however beautifully they say it
The Billboards only lie,
Psalm 120
Offers itself like a protest song
Sung by a people moving in another direction
Taking an opposite way.
We sing it when we can no longer stomach the deceit
At the heart of the world we live in;
The sham that we can make our own peace
As though God does not exist,
As though God has not come into the world
In the life of Jesus Christ
To offer us the only peace worth making.
The peace that’s formed on a cross
The peace that escapes from a tomb
The peace that makes
Forgiveness,
Friendship,
Truth,
Grace,
Blessing,
Welcome
Acceptance,
Courage,
Hope
More than just words on our lips
But realities growing out of our living.
The peace of Jesus Christ.
Psalm 120
Is a song for those
Ready to begin a new journey,
Away from the pretence
That with a little more education,
With a higher standard of living,
With greater honesty among politicians
With more time to travel
Or indulge our pet hobbies
It can all be fixed.
“Woe is me that I am an alien in Meshech
That I live among the tents of Kedar,”
Says the psalmist.
Whenever we are fed up with the life
We see on TV
Whenever
We read the paper
And say to someone can you believe that,
Whenever the truth dawns on us
That the world we have pitched our tent in
Seems like a world full of strangers
Intent on biting and scratching until they get what they want.
Then we are ready
To make psalm 120 our own.
It has been said
And it’s usually the case
(It certainly was for me)
That until we get fed up with the world as it is
We won’t develop an appetite
For the world of God’s grace.
Until we realise
The world as it is
Just isn’t right
That no amount of human ingenuity
Will make it better in the future,
We are reluctant
To give up the falsehood
Of trying to make our own peace.
The psalmist says:
“Too long have I lived among those
Who hate peace.”
But who in their right mind
Hates peace?
Well that depends
On how peace comes.
In our house, among the children
The price of peace depends
On who says sorry first.
And even then, sorry's are only grudgingly given,
They would rather hold onto their little resentment
Than make the effort to be at peace.
A sorry is not the road either willingly wishes to take.
True peace
The bible claims,
Is only made in relationship
With the God who made and loved me,
And for some
That’s not a truth they are willing to hear.
And so a world is often made
Where God is kept outside
From work desk and playground
Holidays planned, homes bought, meals eaten.
And any peace to be made
Will be sought without the help of God
I once got tired of that world.
And left it.
Have you?
Maybe
If we are to find God’s peace
We each of us
At some time
Need to reach the point of the psalmist
Whose experience in this world leaves him feeling
Like a stranger
In a hostile crowd.
“Lord”
The psalmist says
“Lord”
God is addressed here
Not as an idea,
Or a vague possibility
But is spoken to
As a person who is there.
The psalmist speaks the name he’s always known
As if he is also known to that name
He says it
With a deep, intense, sore, sustained longing
In the way a child shouts out
For her mother in the next room
Knowing she will be heard by the one she calls.
And under the burden
Of what life has become
The psalmist cries calls out:
“Deliver me, o Lord
From lying lips
From a deceitful tongue.”
Christians have a name for that deliverance.
A name
For the specific journey
Of leaving behind the life
That tries to make its own peace
Swapped For the life
That receives God’s peace instead.
We call that journey repentance.
Repentance
Is the way we leave the fantasy
Of the life we are fed up with
For the peace and truth
We find in God.
If you want to get to the Allen’s farm
Then you have to go along manse road
There’s no other way to drive there.
No other road that will take you there.
If we want to embrace
The truth of God
That brings us to peace
We must go by the way of repentance
No other road
Will take us there.
But what is repentance?
Well Eugene Peterson puts it best for me
And I’ll quote it at length:
“Repentance is not an emotion. It is not feeling sorry for your sins. It is a decision. It is deciding that you have been wrong in supposing that you could manage your own life and be your own god; it is deciding you were wrong in thinking that you had or could get the strength, education, training to make it on your own; its deciding you have been told a pack of lies about yourself, your neighbours and the world.
And it is deciding that God in Jesus Christ is telling you the truth.
Repentance is the realisation that what God wants from you and what you want from God are not going to be achieved by doing the same old things, thinking the same old thoughts. Repentance is a decision to follow Jesus Christ and become his pilgrim in the path of peace. It puts a person in touch with the reality God creates.”
If we want to say with the psalmist
I am for peace
That is the peace of God
Then we are invited
To walk along the only road
That leads to that peace
By the way of repentance.
Repentance invites us
On the kind of Journey Kallistos Ware describes
When he writes:
“To repent is to look, not downward at my own shortcomings, but upward at God’s love; not backward with self reproach, but forward with trustfulness. It is to see, not what I have failed to be, but what by the grace of Christ I can yet become.”
1 comment:
Uplifting, honest and perceptive, Paulo. Everything I've come to appreciate in your work.
Blessings
FBL
Post a Comment