Hope On The Installment Plan

Hope without action is just wishful thinking.

The action can be physical, putting your heart into a future through the work of your hands. A new garden, a book you're writing, a home improvement. For me, it's building a small aeroplane (not a model, one I can fly).

Or it can be mental. There's the story of an American pilot who was shot down over North Viet Nam, and kept in awful conditions, in solitary confinement.

He could have surrendered to despair. Instead, he built his dream house...in his head. He drew up the plans, dug the foundations, built the walls, did the electrical and plumbing work...and did not let up, even for a day.

When released in 1973, he went home...and built that house.

You can't let cancer leave you sour;

you can find hope, you can!

But its bill comes due every hour

on God's installment plan.

It would be nice were it an app

to download to your brain,

but thinking like that is a trap

for it won't long remain

without the work that you put in

each and every day.

If you really want to win,

this is the only way,

to pay in effort every cost

that keeps your hope from being lost.

The Five Minute Friday prompt this week is SCARED.

Don't be scared to be afraid,

don't be afraid of shaking knees,

for that's the way that life is made,

and if you do not freeze

you'll find you, trembling, can go on

through things you thought you could not face;

you'll find that when all hope is gone

it leaves a kind of grace

that is the province of the lost 

who cannot hope for safety,

and who no longer count the cost

and learn a rawboned gaiety 

that leaves them dancing in the night,

shining with an inner light.

Syl finds hope in the existence of ice cream.

The Elephant In The Room (Tell His Story)

 

I think it's really time to fly

away from anger, loathing, hate;

wave it all a stern goodbye 

before the whole thing gets too late.

I don't know who you voted for,

and, in truth, I do not care.

I'm glad to open up a door

and offer you a comfy chair

and a cup of chamomile

along with a warm croissant.

The two of us can keep it real

and usher out the elephant 

that these days is in the room,

his acrid droppings hell's perfume.

Syl would go for a croissant.

Harvest Of Truth

 My New Year's Resolution was to be honest, even when it's uncomfortable.

I'm starting to lose the meaning. Self-delusion about my own strength and worth is being stripped away by day and night, and the holes in my faith and trust are starting to show.

Pain is doing this, of course, but also bodily humiliation and fatigue, and seeing even small aspirations pass beyond my reach.

I need the courage of full surrender, but it's not just a word, nor is it an action, once done with difficulty and then past.

It's a process, and may well call for more grit than I have.

I have to learn how to be brave

and reweave my warp and my weft

so that perhaps I can save

the worth of the time I have left,

to rise past the pain and despair,

to cling to the Foot of the Cross,

in blood-drops of He who hangs there

as ransom for sin and for loss,

and then perhaps raise my head

to look into the kindest of eyes

that offers Himself in my stead

if I can turn from self-told lies

that paint me as hero of old

but leave my heart lost in the cold.

The Five Minute Friday prompt this week is PERSUADE.

I've tried hard to persuade you all

that I am bulletproof,

but that tale us getting tall

and you deserve the truth,

to know I'm really terrified,

and to know that I 

do not care to be sanctified 

if it means I have to die,

for there are those who say to me

that I demonstrate faith and trust,

but the honest truth, you see

is that, really, I just 

want to these days to last and last,

and want this fatal cup to pass.

Syl offered me a lick of her ice cream. One lick.

Clowns Of Glory Tell His Story

I came to Christianity from a Buddhist background, and combined with hearing loss through prolonged exposure to really loud noises, I misheard some things.

Like, Jesus healed leopards. Since He's the Lion of Judah, thus seemed pretty cool, that He had an affinity for big cats, but what about tigers and cheetahs and panthers? Were they left out?

And then...

I hope I'll be surviving

to the ending of this story 

when Christ will be arriving 

with His Clowns of Glory,

whom I will then gladly join,

big red nose and floppy shoes,

and will then sinners enjoin

to hear the bright Good News

that Calvary was not a test,

but is a hospital.

It's not for the righteous best,

but for those who fell

and can only stand again

by His Blood, and by His Pain.

Sylvia rose from the blood of a dead puppy in her womb, and the pain if adandonment in a Texas summer field. She gets it, and she can still laugh.