Poem for the Day

Ode

by Joseph Addison

(after Psalm 19:1-6)

The Spacious Firmament on high,
With all the blue Etherial Sky,
And spangled Heav’ns, a Shining Frame,
Their great Original proclaim:
Th’ unwearied Sun, from Day to Day,
Does his Creator’s Power display,
And publishes to every Land
The Work of an Almighty Hand.
Soon as the Evening Shades prevail,
The Moon takes up the Wondrous Tale,
And nightly to the list’ning Earth
Repeats the Story of her Birth:
Whilst all the Stars that round her burn,
And all the Planets, in their turn,
Confirm the Tidings as they rowl,
And spread the Truth from Pole to Pole.
What though, in solemn Silence, all
Move round the dark terrestrial Ball?
What tho’ nor real Voice nor Sound
Amid their radiant Orbs be found?
In Reason’s Ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious Voice,
For ever singing, as they shine,
‘The Hand that made us is Divine.’

Sabbatical Day 11

Heathrow airport is a meeting of the nations. Ephesians 1.10 speaks of God bringing all things together in Christ. All nations made one, a reverse of Babel. (May we have a wonderful foretaste at Praise in the Park in July coinciding with the opening weekend of the Olympics.)

Just as in Christ there are no denominations but rather rich variation, so also in Christ God makes us one people with boundless and wonderful diversity. How wonderful and glorious is our creator God. As a boy I grew up expecting everyone to be somewhat like me; but God has changed that in me and continues to change it. How blessed I am by that!

The inflight film I go for is The Tree of Life. It begins with Job 38.4,7: Where we're you when I laid the foundation of the earth...?

The way of nature and the way of grace: there are two approaches to life. We have to choose, whatever comes. But what does this mean in the loss of a child? The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. An act of nature; how does grace respond?

In the film, through a death of a son the whole world is seen in a different light, through the lens of memory and loss. What are we to you Lord in the vast universe of your creation? In the film images of deep space and the grandeur of this world, replace the poetic images in Job of creation. We are taken to volcanoes, echoing perhaps Job which speaks of God as creator of the depths of the earth.

As the film flashbacks through episodes of life bringing up family, attempts to be in control of one's own destiny through discipline and hard work are rendered useless by the vastness of God's ways (as loss of work, loss of home and loss of life intervene). 'Where we're you when I made the world?' Though we may kick against life, yet it is bigger than we are.

Yet it is a film of exuberance. Through loss, life is valued afresh, enjoyed, delighted in. What remains is wonderful, a fabulous gift from God, something to be overwhelmed by, with thankfulness.

I am being opened to the vastness of God's world, not only its diversity but it's incomprehensibility. My Sabbatical supervisor suggested I allow myself to be overwhelmed by my experiences. To be baptised by them perhaps is one way of putting it. I understand that. In visiting my mother towards the end of her life, the daily experience was of being overwhelmed, but there, day by day it seemed, I found, or better, was found by, God's grace. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ."

I note too a theme of this Sabbatical, the revisiting of loss (of my parents) where I know there is work to be done. In our baptism in Christ is our deliverance.

Sabbatical Day 7

More devotionally than most of my reading this week, I have been reading Finding the Groove - Robert Gelinas. He explores a 'jazz theology' of Christian faith. Noting that Jesus responds individually in his encounters in the gospels, he explores how we too might 'improvise', to use a jazz term.

Three quotes:

'What words do you use to describe God? Surprisingly, one of the first things that God reveals about himself rarely makes our top five: God is creative - the most creative being in the universe!'

'[W]e can use tension to lead us to places with God we never would have gone if all the tensions of our faith were to be resolved.'

'The apostle Paul describes God's creative process this way: "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared for us to do." Workmanship is the Greek word poiema. This is where we get our English word poem. What an amazing thought to think of oneslef as a poem of God. How humbling to imagine God sitting down with paper and pencil and laboring over each verse of our lives. To the Greeks the word poieme carried with it the connotation of "fabric" or "material." This works well with the next phrase - "created in Christ Jesus." It is as if Jesus was the workshop in which God fabricated us into being."

One chapter draws in John Coltrane, whose music I have never understood. However, Gelinas' route into 'Love Supreme' has opened a door for me into his jazz which I expect to explore further.

Talking of being creative, I took this photograph of Rutland Water in 2007, but hadn't been sure how to 'develop' the rather more bland image so that it properly represented what we saw on a journey back from Loughborough. This captures something of the beautiful scene that spread before our eyes: a masterpiece by He who is Love Supreme.