Prayer – This Jolly Beggar

Poetry in Prayer: An Elfchen #1

Blogger friend Richard introduced me to the Elfchen or Elevenie form, which is a German-inspired poem of eleven words in five lines, with 1, 2, 3, 4 words, then 1 word again for the fifth and last line.

LORD,

Help me

Be as Christ

Seeking You in prayer

Always

Then

Shall I

Walk with You

In trust, in communion

Eternal

Photos for Cee's FOTD challenge, November 20, 2021: Tulip Fields
Flower of the Day Challenge (FOTD): "Please feel free to post 
every day or when you you feel like it.  
Don’t forget that my FOTD challenge accepts 
gardens, leaves and berries as well as flowers."

Pray for India

Oceans away from me in India, doctors mark the dead, the funeral pyres burn ceaselessly. Just yesterday I heard India has become the first country to exceed 400,000 coronavirus infections in a 24-hour period. More than 3,500 deaths were also recorded during the same period.

Wayward my fluttering thoughts fly across the seas

Distracted with worry for friends and family;

Yet borne on anxious wings my prayers fly straight to Thee,

O God, pleading Thy compassionate mercy.

“I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth” (Psalm 121: 1-2).

Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD!
O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy!
Psalm 130: 1-2

For Cee's FOTD challenge; Eugi's Weekly Prompt ("flutter") for April 29, 2021; Sammi's Weekend Writing Prompt, "Wayward," word count exactly 77 words.

Miraculum ad Fontes

Pastor Peter was all a’flutter.
There was the baby. There were the parents. There was the baptismal font.
And there was Mick Mooney, to whom he had given bottled water for the font, boasting a malicious grin.
The unopened bottle stood, tragically, on the chancel rail.
Peter prayed, opened the font.
It was filled to the brim.
Afterwards, he confessed his surprise to the happy couple.
“Oh, that was me,” the new mother said. “I just wanted to say a prayer over the font before the service began when I saw it was empty. I didn’t do wrong, did I?”

100 words; fiction
For Rochelle Wisooff-Fields' Friday Fictioneers
Click on the frog and join in!

Turning Back Loneliness

*Written for Paula’s Thursday Inspo #77: theme is **lonely** and the above image*

I’m lonely without You, Lord,
though all the world be mine
the city’s blue-gray skyline
the starry twinkling host

I need to know you near me
Your love-light in my eye
the fragrance of your Spirit
the sweetness of your Word

somewhere I took a wrong turn
I chased my own desire
a world of smug contentment
but lacking peace of mind

I know you never left me
so I feel you all the more
when I’ve turned my back to you
your tender love ignored

I don’t know why I do this
leave you, then come back
as if I never knew You
as if my faith were dead

returning then I seek You
repenting of time lost
joyous to talk to You, Lord,
and walk with You again.

Lilies in DC

Lilies by the Smithsonian Castle, Washington, DC

There’s no one in this great country of ours that’s not thinking about its future, especially as our President was transported to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center after testing positive with COVID-19 yesterday. We have had so much turmoil over the past four years as our political leaders have lost their minds and hardened their hearts against the welfare of their citizens. For them the country is all about their power, their political influence, their global agendas, while they and their families fill their own pockets and campaign coffers with foreign and domestic corporate and union paybacks. Fires of hatred and division have been fanned to divide us, and ultimately to control us. But we must not let the forces of hate win.

We have the testimony of God’s creation all around to remind us that even in Washington, DC, good can triumph, by His grace, beauty can blossom like lilies.

This evening let’s join with the millions praying for our President’s recovery as well as his wife, Melania, and the good of our nation in the weeks and months and years to come.

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
1 Timothy 2: 1-4

Through It All: Fruit

Prostrated by the summer’s heat, we cannot always see the fruit that is being produced on a vine. Just so, cast down by our sufferings, it’s hard to see the fruit God is producing in us. Even so, Lord God, we pray, let it all be to your glory! Amen.

[Christ Jesus said:] “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.”
John 15: 1-6

A Common-Place Jotting: the Ancient Mariner

Common-Place or “Locus Communis” — a place to remember

From Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, among the ghostly visitor’s words to the wedding guest, driven by the agony of guilt, a warning to his listener that all of creation deserves our praise:

One of Gustave Doré’s celebrated engravings illustrating the poem.
PHOTO: ART RESOURCE

He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.

lines 614-617

Mirror and Light

Are You not the Light, O Lord, and we but the mirror? Disperse the clouds that obstruct Thy light and be Thou our vision. Amen.

Mirrorl and Light

“Unless the LORD builds the house,
those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the LORD watches over the city,
the watchman stays awake in vain.
It is in vain that you rise up early
and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
for he gives to his beloved sleep.”

Psalm 127:1-2 (ESV) A Song of Ascents

Jesus. King of Angels

Beautiful bedtime song from Fernando Ortega: “Jesus, King of Angels.”

May the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus be with you tonight and give you a good night’s sleep free from all anxiety to greet the new day with fresh hope.

Jesus, King of angles, Heaven’s light
Shine your face upon this house tonight.
Let no evil come into my dreams,
Light of Heaven, keep me in your peace.

Remind me how you made dark spirits flee,
And spoke your power to the raging sea,
And spoke your mercy to a sinful man –
Remind me, Jesus, for this is what I am.

The universe is vast beyond the stars
But Your are mindful when a sparrow falls
And mindful of the anxious thoughts
That find me, surround me, and bind me

With all my heart I love you,
Sovereign Lord.
Tomorrow, let me love you even more,
And rise to speak
The goodness of Your name
Until I close my eyes in sleep again.

The universe is vast beyond the stars
But you are mindful when a sparrow falls
And mindful of the anxious thoughts
That find me, surround me, and bind me

Jesus, King of angels, Heaven’s light
Hold my hand,
And keep me through this night

Let All the Earth Give Thanks!

Father of the trumpeting air and the setting sun
the purple skies and rainbow grasses
flapping ears and ardent eyes
grasshoppers dancing with the breezes
thunder of my feet
singing of the stars
beating of my heart,
I thank You whose hands have made
whose breath gives life
to me.

God of the aurora glorious
invisible Light of lights towering, blazing
across glacial mountains and hearts
over blue ice, silver melts,
resounding majesty of fiery life
bursting, joyous song of sky and sea
in solitary havens of the northern vasts,
I thank You whose hands have made
whose breath gives life
to me.

Continue reading “Let All the Earth Give Thanks!”