Living Tree Poetry

“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.”
Dr Suess

“It’s the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us. The question is not what you look at but what you see.”
Henry David Thoreau

“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.”
Henry David Thoreau

“All you can apprehend in the vision of faith is your own. Look as far as you can, for it is all yours. All that you long to be as a Christian, all that you long to do for God, are within the possibilities of faith. Then come, still closer, and with your Bible before you, and your soul open to all the influences of the Spirit, let your whole being receive the baptism of His presence; and as He opens your understanding to see all His fullness, believe He has it all for you. Accept for yourself all the promises of His word, all the desires He awakens within you, all the possibilities of what you may be as a follower of Jesus. All the land you see is given to you.

The actual provisions of His grace come from the inner vision. He who puts the instinct in the bosom of yonder bird to cross the continent in search of summer sunshine in the Southern clime is too good to deceive it, and just as surely as He has put the instinct in its breast, so has He also put the balmy breezes and the vernal sunshine yonder to meet it when it arrives.

He who breathes into our hearts the heavenly hope, will not deceive or fail us when we press forward to its realization.”
Selected (from Streams in the Desert)

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways.”
Isaiah 55:8

My Prayer today is for faith. Faith that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.  Faith that sees. Henry David Thoreau reminds us of that critical truth in life that keeps us afloat –  “Its not what you look at but what you see”.   We all have reasons to despair, and can find plenty of evidence, if we look, for our complaints. But for the faith that God has put in our hearts, we might remain there, looking into the dark.  My faith is prone to questions, many more than God is prepared to answer.  His response to me is to leave it with Him, and his providence.  So often I want to take his hand and move it to work things out, not always trusting he is at work already behind the scenes.  The faith that God would have us have, is the child-like faith of dependence and trust.  I wonder if that faith might look something like that of a boy standing on a hill looking for out for his father’s return. He sees the dust rising way before his father’s vehicle comes into sight.  Today I pray we might be people that look out for the signs God will also give us to keep us trusting and believing.

Artwork: Peter Listed (Garden of Bright Images)

These are drawn from daily prayers and reflections I write my Chaplaincy colleagues.