Tag: Hope

Adagio: A Christmas Poetry Project–Black Night Of Hope

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 8 Comments

blades of grass adagio project

Adagio: A Christmas Poetry Project

We are writing together. As we did a little while back( click the Adagio Poetry page tab at the top of the site’s home page). And we would love for you to join us. Holly and I and each one of you. There is a beautiful hymn, a song, sung by a  friend of Holly’s. This is our inspiration for Adagio: A Poetry Project, here in this Advent Season. Here, with Christmas upon our hearts. Listen here to Born In The Night Mary’s Child.

Holly’s offering can be found here, at A Lifetime of Days. 

It would be our hope, our desire, and it would bring us joy if you would allow us the privilege of reading your words, poetry or prose. Just add your link to your art in the comments here and at Holly’s. We are all travelers toward this Christmas Day in this Christmas Season with expectant hearts.

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Black Night Of Hope

Walk us, with us
Pray we now
Fabric frail our worn out covering
Wind howls through thin flesh

World’s cold wind blows cruel
But He, was born of you
To shield in love, save from cruel sin
Bone tired weary we and you

Cradled Him , sheltered Christ
Under covering black of night
Though radiant beams from
A Child’s face would tell of Holy

Graceful Mother out of town
Traveler on a road of dirt, dust
Let us grasp your servant heart
And sing of Holy Sacrifice

Sacred offering in the night
Reconciled hearts, gloria in excelsis deo
We proclaim the birth of King
From your very mother’s womb

And Hope was birthed in stall with muck
On cold, in winter, still of night
That when the sting of death and sin
Would weigh us down

A broken fragile mankind now is
Changed, we walk free with
Broken chains
You birthed our Hope

One still dark night
Black night of Hope
We, weary
World rejoicing

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Oh Me Of Little Faith

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 16 Comments

She tells me this is where Faith comes in.

If God had limited patience instead of limiteless patience, I would have worn Him out yesterday.

It was a hand wringing day. And I know better.

I am surrounded by nativity scenes. Hemmed in by mangers. One to my left, one to my right and one behind my doubting Thomas head.

The Trinity symbolized I see now, by my three scenes of His birth. And  I still wring the hands though He wrought a life of pain and sacrifice for me.

And even with the physical reminders of my Savior I still need to be told….and this is where Faith comes in.

She knows my deep struggle. She is what I needed God to bring my way months ago as my struggle as a parent of a child who learns like we all do, uniquely. Who is wired like we all are, by Father God, individually, with strengths and gifts. Who is growing, as we all are on this journey, at his pace marked by his beautifully and wonderfully made intricacies.

But a mother wrings her hands and a heart has been know to skip a beat or double up on beats. And she has come along to hold my hand in the dark nights of the soul.

And there is another too. Who writes a beautiful letter. He is patient and strong and godly. And he tells me things that make me cry, too busy in my doubt and worry to see on my own. Too close and too doubled over in confusion to see or own or know, truly. Words of confidence and hope. Words of affirmation and decisiveness.

The two come along side and bolster my spirits and I know they are life savers wearing flesh and blood and bones to a mother of waning faith.

And at the end of the night, when the black curtain pulls over a day marked with fatigue and anxiety she speaks into my soul. Words I don’t read until His new mercy morning arrives.

And she write these words “He is a great kid…we just all need to help him learn how to access his strengths and use them…it will come with time, patience, and persistence! HAVE FAITH!

And like the perfect storms of life, she is talking and texting and emailing me with a diligence and committment to shoring up my child’s struggles with a tender and firm spirit. And the calm before the storm comes in fact after the storm has passed.

She knows the language which sounds like Greek to my ears of misunderstanding and misinterpretation.  I am learning daily the language of ADHD. And it is Russian and Chinese and Hebrew all rolled into one. I need a translator. I need help.

It comes in the form of co-pilgrims and co-laborers.

I wrote a letter yesterday to my church  which was hard to explain to a questioning child. She looks on me with doubt and lack of understanding. I tell her, if you read my letter you will understand why I feel lead to step back for a season from serving.Because I know in the letter I have said I feel like this is an act of obedience. And there is confusion and fatigue from schism and division and I need a season of quiet and contemplation and prayer and clarity.

A pause in my serving to steady a wobbly spirit.

But I can see I have let her down. She worries that it means we are leaving the church. We are not. I am taking a pause in my service in several different capacities.

And the quiet sets in. And the last thing I want to do is disappoint a child.

But she is questioning and maybe confused. And who can read a sixteen year old girl’s mind.

So I look at the managers that hem me in. There are three. Some days I need one hundred and  three. Days like my yesterday.

I thank Him for His new Mercies, for the rain and for tears.

My husband walked in from Fishermen men’s ministry, last night.

Our friend spoke. He has months to live. He has cancer.

And when you have been in the midst of one so full of faith and full of life you radiate the Glory and the Hope that come beaming from the face of a man at perfect peace. From our friend Pete.

You bring all that home with you from a night in the presence of living, breathing, Hope.

He tells me pieces of  stories that Pete told the men. Some of it I grabbed and some of it my weary hand wringing self let fall to the ground.

A weary soul doesn’t hold tight to Hope.

But you long  to brush up against Hope like this and pray that the remnants and particules like dust fall on you and stay. Fall on a weary dusty soul. Dirty with doubt.

And I pray my daughter can wrap understanding around my walking away for a season of pause. That I didn’t throw in the towel , its only in the wash for a season of renewal. And to gain clarity of mind and heart and spirit. That in obedience to Him He will give me a language of love to explain to her rightly my decision.

Just like the language of understanding I need to learn to speak with my son in his struggles that are uniquely his own.

Its raining outside, the day weeps as I weep.

And I think that today I will play as I did when I was a child. With the manager scene. Didn’t we all. Move the pieces around and marvel. Look on the Mary and Joseph and the animals and the moveable baby Jesus.

I think I’ll move in a little closer to the manager today and the baby who bears the weight of the world and the weight of my sin.

And today, the weight of a mother’s pain as she seeks an increase in faith.

This rainy December day, I know anew, His mercies are new everyday.

And that I can proclaim Alleluia Anyway.

ESM and Stella

Linking with Emily, Jennifer, and Duane today. Joining Joy at joy in this journey dot com for Life Unmasked.

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Bathed In Light

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 3 Comments

Sometimes, more often than not, very often, well you can determine the frequency of it in your own life, an experience in the physical happens first and then it seeps all lit up into the spiritual. Or it frames the spiritual with clarity and precision.

It takes hearing and living this seven times seventy for it to shine its light of truth on my little world.

A gifted teacher of the Word in my world who peeled back layers of understanding for me taught this, said this, focused on this principle for years. And I get it with wave on wave of new ah ha’s.

And all the strings of white lights now make sense. How I go back to the corner store, the one in another zip code where I can be dirty from cleaning house and pray to remain anonymous. As if that weren’t broken irony in and of itself; my hiding while seeking light. To try and hide the dirt and hope to not be recognized, pitiful, dirty me.

I understand why I peel back the layers of the bills, green with faces of men in government, to add more light to our darkness. Add layers of light. Find another dark corner to light up.

How the corners of the house are lit and warm and white,  hoping to reflect holy. Searching for glimpses of His glory. Looking to capture His Love in our home, His warm redemptive beauty.

And when I lay down at night and when I rise in the morning, there is all this Light. And it was born in that dark barn. It lit up the world with bright Hope. Changing us from a shadowy dark people into a place where there is living breathing Light.

Transforming us and chasing away the darkness for once and for all and forever. White, a bright symbol of a Radiant Savior, for a few weeks, blazing trails on the hearts of the broken to dwell in us for eleven other months. In celebration of all He gave in coming to us in the middle of the bleak winter of our lives.

We wonder what it is in our DNA that wants to run the cords around the home, plug into the outlets for more and more of the bright. To run from the shadows of the dark and dingy and the hiding places into the Light of New Life.

To wake to Light, to live our days in Light, to go to bed with Light.

Doesn’t our soul long for more of the bright Light that came to a lost and desperate world.

We celebrate in ways which falter and fail in their dim replica of His brilliance. What this love of Jesus, this shining Savior, this Christ light, a Bright Hope Jesus, brought into the dark world. We try to come up with things to look like holy to point to his blindingly brilliant love.

The lights are a way to shine today to symbolize what is truly eternal in His Love.

Why would we live dim dark dank shadowy hidden lives when we can walk into the Light– and stay there.

I look at the strings of lights and see the physicality of the spirituality of The Light of The World.

And I long to leave my lights up all year long, oh how I dread the grays of the Januarys of the soul. I dread the grays. Dread the dark. Its shallow breathing, heaviness. Its call to come and hide. To cower in sin and cover up.

So while we walk out Advent and step into that glorious Christmas Day, I want to soak in His Light, bask in His glory, and seek Him on all the dark days of my messy living

And I don’t have to keep the lights up all year because He came in the dark of night to bring Light to a dying world.

Nothing can dim that fact, or take from it, or lesson the brightness of His radiant glory. Even when the cords and strands go back to their dark dusty attic to lay boxed in cardboard. To wait to shine again next year. To point to Him.

Grateful dear Lord for your Light in my darkness.

Grateful that you infuse Light into the bloodstream of our very lives.

And that you call us to live in this brilliant place of radiant grace.

Where even without hundreds of chords of light streaming white, imitating in a fragile failing way Your Beauty, we will have all the Light we could ever need.

We have the streaming brilliance of our Savior.

Amen? Amen.

umbrella sun

On The Platform – A Reflective – Part Two

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 4 Comments

Its election day and there are storms brewing and God.

And God is unchanged.

We rolled down the east coast back in June on a mission trip.

And saw and lived New York, Brooklyn.

Down in her belly, for some hours. We are marked and changed.

A day can jump all over a soul who has no hope. Who wears fatigue like a worn out flannel shirt, with holes and missing buttons.

The day can drag you down as you stare and stand on a subway platform, weary worn out.

The eyes tell almost all you need to know. You know those hollow weary orbs.

I asked her if she’d play the game, designed to bring some joy. Her body spent, she sat. I sat. We sat. For minutes lives merged in the belly of a city. On the platform.

If you stop and take a minute and look ’em in the eyes, and tell them a little of your story and invite them to play, well things begin to happen.

We came to bring some joy to the subway with our scrabble game, all taped up on the subway tiles. Some Christ Hope. The ministry of presence presents itself selfless, as a gift.

But the giver is the receiver and the giver drowns in blessings, down in the bottom of a dirty city, white pants worn, standing out like neon in a dark dank place.

We entered in and invited in and stood for hours, rats ran by, and smiles beamed bright.

People told their stories, to us. To strangers.

We were the strangers in a city needing soft and gentle. Hungry for the words, taped up on the tiles.

There is a world of hurt and a hurting world. And people really want a minute of your time, to play, even if its scrabble taped up on the walls.

People don’t have strangers care, enough.

And we don’t play enough. The letters in the basket, taped up on the wall, the group effort, the spirit of community.

Taking the love of Christ, down, down, down, and to to to.

There was one woman, I am haunted by her story. And her face and her eyes and her hurt. You can stand on the platform and smile and care and you can be a receptacle of pain. I watched as others poured out love into a hurting soul.

I merged with my own past on that platform. I see myself now, haunted by the lonely subway rides and waits, alone. It was 1980 something and I lived in the City. There are enough lonely stares to fill a Milky Way, little twinkling eyes, dim and grim.

You can bring a salty boat load of joy to a sea of hurt all the way from Charleston, South Carolina and dump it right there.

On the platform.

And on a day when winds blow through the nation and a N’or Easter simmers off the coast, and New York is in a world of pain, you can spread your salty joy, your Christ-love, your Christ-hope right smack dab where you are.

You don’t need duct tape or painters tape and cut out letters and a very clever puzzle, though it is a beautiful tool. A joy magnet.

The salty tears, and salty Mercy work to salve a wound.

You can stand in line, you might today, to vote.

And you can stand in awe of what Jesus’ love does when it meets someone in their world of hurt.

Look ’em in the eyes and put on your listening ears. Your Mercy ears. Your sweet compassion, an eagerness to know, their story.

Wear it to the polls, and wear it on your sleeve, and wipe a tear with Hope.

You can find a hurting soul in the line at The Pig or Trader Joe’s or Walmart I am sure.

Brooklyn has her fair share now, and she did in June too.

There was a man who wore 500 tatooes for a shirt and he was mad. He was madder than mad. At this world and at this life and wore his pain like a badge. But Margaret smiled her smile and stayed in love, in the conversation.

Love stays. It doesn’t leave. Love presses in, in gentleness.

He swore he wouldn’t play the game. But a mind can change and love can soften. And he did.

And his story leaked out like an old Chevy leaking oil, right there on that platform.

Margaret wiped it up with a Mercy rag.

My insides wept and maybe my outsides too when we left Brooklyn.

They haunt me, those faces. Maybe I’ll find a hurting soul in line to vote and ask him if he wants to play. Or maybe I’ll just smile and look into his eyes.

It is sad we tell our kids to watch out for strangers. We do. We must.

Strangers are the ones who seem to hurt the most.

If you have any interest at all in Part One, it is here. Or you can read yesterday’s post, which will accomplish the same thing. Bless you for being here on this journey. Wishing you a boatload of grace today.

Linking with Heather.