From My Nature Journal: A Jesus Blessing

OK, I think it’s time for another Celtic-style blessing. I’ve shared some of these blessings before, some I have written and some I’ve found elsewhere, and you can check one out here if you’d like. But this is one I wrote seven years ago during another Eastertide.

My heart is full these days, having come off a rich and reflective Lenten season here in our church. But it has also been an unusually intense and busy Lent, thus my inability to get a new post up at all yet this month. Still, the unusual Lent made me also unusually eager for Easter, to be able to celebrate again the victory of Jesus over sin, death and the devil, what Martin Luther called ‘the unholy trinity.’

So, Jesus be praised! Christ is risen! May you receive the blessing Jesus is able to provide as a result of his victory!

A Celtic Blessing

The love of Christ to win you,

The joy of Christ to keep you.

The peace of Christ to settle you,

The patience of Christ to suffer you.

The kindness of Christ to overwhelm you,

The goodness of Christ to delight you.

The faithfulness of Christ to encourage you,

The gentleness of Christ to heal you.

The hope of Christ to assure you,

The glory of Christ to inspire you.

The purposes of Christ to occupy you,

The rest of Christ to renew you.

The light of Christ to draw you,

The path of Christ to guide you.

The hand of Christ to lead you,

The arms of Christ to surround you.

The absence of Christ to humble you,

The presence of Christ to strengthen you.

The grace of Christ to amaze you,

The touch of Christ to restore you.

The creativity of Christ to enchant you,

The imagination of Christ to form you.

The watchfulness of Christ to protect you,

The serenity of Christ to calm you.

The face of Christ to behold you,

The smile of Christ to warm you.

The mercy of Christ to correct you,

The forgiveness of Christ to cleanse you.

The majesty of Christ to overshadow you,

The breath of Christ to enliven you.

The exhilaration of Christ to thrill you,

The stillness of Christ to quiet you.

The provision of Christ to satisfy you,

The beauty of Christ to be seen in you.

The Spirit of Christ to overtake you,

The word of Christ to hold you.

These blessings of Christ be yours

This day and every day.

In the strong Name, amen. 

~~ RGM, April 20, 2017

Blowin' in the Wind: Another Song for the Season

(Blowin’ in the Wind is a regular feature on my blog consisting of an assortment of nature writings – hymns, songs, excerpts, prayers, Bible readings, poems or other things – pieces I may not have written but that inspire me or have given me joy. I trust they will do the same for you.)

We’ve just come through the highest of holy days in the Christian faith, and my heart is absolutely full: I was able to lead Easter worship yesterday for the first time since 1996. Being on mid-judicatory denominational staff all the years since then has provided its wonderful ministry blessings, but wow, I have missed worship leading!

I’m brought back in memory to my first Easter away from local parish church ministry. My wife and kids and I were visiting family in Florida that holiday, something a pastor’s family is not typically able to do. (It had been nearly two decades for us.) But as the pastor in my in-laws’ church stood for the call to worship, leading the resounding call and response, “Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed!” silent tears coursed down my cheeks, and I got so choked up not a word could be croaked of the traditional hymn that followed, Christ the Lord is Risen Today. I was wishing I were the one up there leading that proclamation that wonderful holiday.

Not so this year! As a result, I find my spirit overflowing with the songs of the season in a renewed way, having pored over the hymnal’s Lenten and Resurrection sections, seeing again all the good old tunes, reminding me of what I have missed. In the process, I was looking for one that had occurred to me while writing my blog two weeks ago on the heavens declaring the glory of God, Christ Whose Glory Fills the Skies, and did not find it in one of those two hymn sections. There it was among the Epiphany hymns, appropriately so, but as I got reacquainted I thought it could also be a good’n to be reminded of during Eastertide.

It’s a ‘greatest hit’ from renowned Methodist hymnwriter Charles Wesley, right up there in my estimation with his Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Amazing Love, O For a Thousand Tongues, and the above-mentioned Christ the Lord is Risen Today, these among more than 6,000 that he wrote! Here it is, written in 1740, published since in over 400 hymnals, Christ Whose Glory Fills the Skies.

Christ, Whose Glory Fills the Skies, by Charles Wesley

Christ, Whose glory fills the skies,

Christ, the true, the only Light,

Sun of Righteousness, arise!

Triumph o’er the shades of night!

Dayspring from on high, be near;

Day Star, in my heart appear.

Dark and cheerless is the morn

Unaccompanied by Thee.

Joyless is the day’s return

Till Thy mercy’s beams I see,

Till they inward light impart,

Glad my eyes, and warm my heart.

Visit then this soul of mine.

Pierce the gloom of sin and grief.

Fill me, Radiancy Divine;

Scatter all my unbelief.

More and more Thyself display,

Shining to the perfect day.

As mentioned above, I wrote two weeks ago on “The heavens declare the glory of God (Psalm 19:1),” of the sky’s luminaries and phenomena reflecting God’s grandeur. Yet this old hymn picks up the skyward glory of God from another angle, Christ’s glory, the Light of the world, whose radiance dispels doubt, brightens the world’s troubling shadows, and lightens the load being borne by every child of earth. It’s not the Easter story per se, but it’s what was accomplished as the result of the Lord’s resurrection.

It’s a true truth worth contemplating awhile, and I will. Perhaps you, too.

Happy Easter!

~~RGM, April 6, 2015

POTM...*: "LOOK! Up in the sky... It's... What?"

(*Photo[s] of the Month)

I have been eager to post these. Gail and I took them last month on our way down the mountain from an afternoon drive southwest of Denver. We thought we were noticing some strange color in the midafternoon clouds, but the sun nearby was just too bright to see it well. Then we positioned ourselves where a ridge could block the sun’s glare, and the colors became strong and much more clear. It wasn’t sunset color. It wasn’t some kind of rainbow or sundog. What was it?

Now I know. It’s simply called iridescence, perhaps in this case, more accurately, altostratus iridescence, and it’s a fairly rare sky phenomenon. In fact, I can recall having seen it only one other time, and that was while visiting our kids in Seattle, out with them on a ferry in the middle of Puget Sound. We all looked up at it in collective wonder. These photos here were taken from top to bottom over a seven-minute period at about 3:30pm last midmonth. Click on a photo to enlarge it.

Iridescence is caused by the same atmospheric conditions that create coronas, also fairly rare: light diffracting around an object, in these cases, around a cloud’s water droplets. Coronas (Latin for crown) are round, and surround the actual sun or moon as a rough circle through a bit thicker sky; iridescence is a more imperfect corona, seen more diffusely among mid-level clouds that are sparser but near the sun. With either, the cloud’s water droplets must be of a certain, uniformly small size, and the cloud fairly thin, thus the marvel’s rarity. Additionally, they can be seen best in the presence of altostratus (mid-level, layered) or altocumulus (mid-level, clumped) cloud forms.

I hope that’s not too much science! But if you’re interested in another of the sky’s very interesting optical effects, hit this link and it will take you back to a post I did last summer after seeing a complete sun halo, or aureole, in Alaska. (Hmmm… that was also while visiting my kids: it’s just another good reason for me to visit my kids a lot more often, so I can see cool things in the sky!)

The scriptures say that at Jesus’ second coming he will return ‘from the clouds,’ and that all the earth will see it at once (Revelation 1:7, et al). Years ago one might have wondered how that might even be possible; but today, with satellite transmission and handheld technology it no longer seems unreasonable. How well I remember my beloved Bible professor, Dr. Paul Sebestyen back at North Park College in Chicago, getting absolutely wistful when he would speak about it: the ‘parousia’ as he called it. To this day, when I see phenomena like this I like to pause and imagine Jesus stepping out of the cloud. It’s a happy thought.

Maranatha. Come Lord Jesus. Soon.

~~RGM, January 10, 2014

P.S. Next up? The music...