Monday, October 14, 2019

"...this world's walls no longer stay my eyes"

I love this poem from Malcolm Guite's soon to be published new cycle of poems.

I'm especially fond of several lines.

First, this one: "Then this world’s walls no longer stay my eyes..."

When heaven invades my world in Christ, previous limitations on my vision begin to dissolve. I see beyond my stunted world to catch glimpses of the eternal, of God, of other people made in God's image, as in need of love, grace, and mercy as me, of who I am by God's grace given in Christ. To use the words of another poet-musician, Bruce Cockburn (see below), Christ, not us, as Cockburn has it, kicks at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.

And then these lines:

"I see his tree, with blossom on its bough,
And nothing can be ordinary now"

Beautiful! I look on the One we crucified and pierced by our sin and see in it the way to a new life, blossoming, exploding with eternal possibilities. How after seeing that, can anything ever be ordinary again? If life can spring from so undeserved a death, God can bring undeserved new life to even me.



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