life: acoustic & amplified

poetry, quotes & thoughts about life

Archive for the category “Gospel”

LOVE this thought…a ‘wow’ poem for us today!!!!

Flesh and Bones

“Look at my hands and my feet;
         see that it is I myself.
         Touch me and see;
         for a ghost does not have flesh and bones
         as you see that I have.”
                  —Luke 24.39

The Roman Imperium by its sword
tried to sever Jesus from his life,
to pry him from his own flesh;
and their minions ever since have sought
to separate the spiritual from the physical
Death, they reasoned, ought to do it well.

How daft of them to think
The One who made all things,
who crafted earth and us from dust,
who fashioned smooth and rugged stones,
and lungs and lips and eyes and hands,
and bones that bear their burdens
with such elegance and grace,
and skin, its mounds and cups and curves
and plains and folds so eloquent,
alluring, and divine—
that the Creating One would by their force
forget pronouncing all things,
in their concrete thingness, good.
They didn’t know the one thing that God wants
is for all love to be made flesh.
So when they robbed poor Jesus of his breath
and blood, the one thing that God gave him, new
and holy, raising him from death, was this:
a body, flawed but breathing, flesh and bone.

Believer, show yourself your hands and side,
your trembling, lusting, spiritual mass,
your creaking, flabby, leaking, blessed flesh.
Look at your hands, that God has made. This is
the glory in which resurrection comes.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

No matter what – Jesus will still be there

This morning I am reading Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis, and the words of Laura F. Winner resound in my heart –

And again, to church. Sometimes I cannot say much about why I go to church other than what people who go to the gym say: I always feel better once I’m there; I feel better after; it is always good for me, not in a take-your-vitamins way, in a chidingly moralistic way, but in a palpable way. Perhaps this is to turn religion into therapy. But church is therapy, that is one of the many things it is, and as my friend Mike once told me, the real problem lies not in recognizing the therapeutic balm of the gospel; the real problem is going through life thinking that the health you need can be found anywhere else.

http://thecripplegate.com/

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