AWAKE
by Lawrence Tribble
possibly written during the Great Awakening
One man awake, awakens another.
The second awakens his next-door brother.
The three awake can rouse a town,
By turning the whole place upside down.
The many awake can make such a fuss,
It finally awakens the rest of us.
One man up with dawn in his eyes,
Surely then multiplies.
God’s Grandeur
by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil, And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell; the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went,
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
No Place To Go
by Edgar Albert Guest (1881-1959)
The happiest nights I ever know
Are those when I've no place to go,
And the missus says When the day is through: “To-night we haven’t a thing to do.”
Oh, the joy of it, and the peace untold Of sitting ’round in my slippers old, With my pipe and book in my easy chair, Knowing I needn’t go anywhere.
Needn’t hurry my evening meal
Nor force the smiles that I do not feel, But can grab a book from a near-by shelf, And drop all sham and be myself.
Oh, the charm of it and the comfort rare; Nothing on earth with it can compare; And I’m sorry for him who doesn't know The joy of having no place to go.
Lord’s Supper Meditation—Aug 20, 2023
1 John 1:5-7
5 This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. 6 If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.
The Lord Jesus Christ has revealed to us through his life, teaching, ministry, death, and resurrection that God is absolute moral perfection. There is no evil in him. There are no character flaws or ethical faults. God is light and in him is no darkness whatsoever.
So then, if we claim to have a relationship with God but keep on walking in darkness, that is, in waywardness and transgression, then we are lying and not practicing the truth.
The Christian Way is into the light. We are to enter the light and keep on walking and living in it. We are to behave uprightly, morally, lovingly, and obediently as the Holy Spirit leads and enables us. We are in the light, just as God is in the light. This is how we have fellowship with one another in the apostolic community, per Jesus himself (“heard from him”).
The second result of walking in the light is that the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin. Cleansing (or purifying) refers to more than just forgiveness but that God erases the stain of sin (Stott). The present tense shows that it is a continuous process (Stott). But what sin needs to be cleansed if we walk in the light? Cleansing indicates sanctification distinct from justification (Alford). As people living in God’s light, we have forgiveness of sins (justification: eternal salvation) and ongoing cleansing from sins (sanctification: growing mature and ridding our lives of sin now). We also have fellowship with one another in the Christian community.
As we eat and drink of the Lord’s Supper today, remembering Christ’s blood and body that was given at Calvary for us and the whole world, let us bask in the light of God and His Son. Let us also resolve to continue walking in the light.