Holy Love, Isaiah: Light of the Nations - Tim Knipp

All will be blessed
through you.
Through you and
your seed
will all be blessed.
All and each - through you
all earth's
people

will be blessed,
blessed,
blessed.

Such is the heartbeat
of our God.
We hear it again
and again,
through Joseph,
Ruth,
David
and Solomon.

He says,
Look to the future
I have planned:
I will be exalted
above the earth
and all peoples
will be drawn
to Me.
Every tribe
and nation
will live together
in harmony
and justice -
centered around
my pulsing
heart
of holy love.

Holy love
seeks out wickedness,
insists on holiness -
severely roots out
festering angers
and deformed
egos
in order to bless.

On the cross
Christ spread his arms
to reveal
My love for all peoples,
drawing them,
calling to them,
to you,
so that all might
receive the 
promised 
blessing:
My holy love.

Gen. 12:3;22:18;26:4;28:14; Isa. 2:1-5; John 12:20-21

Return to Me - Isaiah: Light to the Nations - Christian Lindbeck (Isa. 1:2-28)

Fierce grief expressed
resolutely
to an errant child.

Out of true, 
we shudder and shimmy,
struggling to stay afloat
yet denying our duplicity
with hypocritical 
leers.

The Father grieves
and steams -
"my people"
"my children"
"my beloved"
have betrayed Me.
You have embraced
your darker natures
and stubbornly
resisted all 
my love
and discipline.
What more can
I do?

I see destruction
and desolation
awaiting you.
Underneath your shiny veneer
is rotten wood,
riddled with honeycomb -
you will shatter
at the merest breath.
Your phony ceremonies
will not save you -
you go through the motions
while treasuring
obscenities
in your heart.
It's revolting!

How far you have come
from the joyful
and pure hearts
that shone like diamonds
to entice the
nations.

Turn!
Turn from your hell-bent ways!

If you come back to Me,
we will begin anew -
your wickedness
will be obliterated,
though saturated with blood,
your hands will be washed
and sanitized,
completely clean.

But,
if you will not,
it will be to your own destruction.
I raised you to be honest
and you have lied,
to show tenderness
and compassion,
but you have ravaged
and trampled
the vulnerable.

Hear me call to you
again and again
even as you spit
on My name
and find your hope
in things.
When the shallow air
you breathe
chokes you,
when wealth trickles
to dust and fails
to comfort,
come back,
come back.

I will always,
always
love you.

Invite - Christian Lindbeck

Hope Rises - Christian Lindbeck (Matt. 5:14-16; Acts 2)

Taking soundings 
of our surroundings
is wisdom.
Awareness of the direction
our shadow falls
lends specificity
and 
orientation.

Hope chirrups from the bushes,
hinting at
an invitation
to follow
the leaf-strewn path.
Hope welcomes
and whispers,
seeks out
and 
cherishes the unlovely.
Hope is a glimpse,
a glimmer
of possibility;
a light penetrating
through dark brambles,
a previous prison.

Hope is a minuscule seed
buried in the tomb
of earth,
pregnant with potential.

Just imagine
the hope that spawns hope -
just imagine
the dreams
that can become actual
and transform lives.

Earth's naval
is an eddy, 
spinning God's-breath
vortexes,
ever-widening circles
of power
flows to enliven
a dead sea,
resurrecting
and restoring all
it touches.
Come.
Drink freely.

And each who drinks,
from each will flow
life-giving liquid,
precious drops
of sparkling hope,
glistening tiaras,
chandelier mirrors
multiplying
dancing flickers
like sparks
dotting
and igniting
the night 
sky.

First the Good News, now This - Tim Knipp (Matt. 6, 11, 13)

"Are you He?
Tell me please - "
Healer, helper,
tender teacher,
spotlit traveler
through a world
of grief.
Are You the answer
and if so, why
do questions 
persist like
carrion flies?

Take a tiny seed and sow it -
in time it becomes a tree;
grains of yeast hidden,
will raise dough to 
overflow
the bowl.

Ages overlap,
like tectonic plates,
shifting,
shaking,
lifting and rumbling
to break and change
the landscape.
Your Kingdom come
in this place and time:
melting hearts like 
lava oozing
from stone,
shake and shiver
souls 
to unite islands,
let continents collide
and coalesce.

Seek it and we will 
see it,
breathe it in 
and it will penetrate
our pores,
animate our limbs
and infect
our finances.

Your Kingdom come
here and now
amid these smelly
ruins;
dip your rags
in our blood and 
bandage our 
splintered hearts;
plant hope again,
in the deep 
and the 
dark.

Rest: Outside series - Christian Lindbeck (Ps. 4:8)

Blessed, blessed rest;
letting go, releasing all,
succumbing
to somnolence.
Essential essence,
mysterious,
dark,
unnerving,
sleep is a reminder
that I am not the center.

Vulnerable.
Inert.
Unable to act,
we humbly sleep
while God does His work.

Sleep: a daily invitation
to accept limitation,
to trust the larger story,
to put myself
in perspective.

What am I?
A vapor,
a child whose father 
never sleeps,
limited,
broken
and in need of
recuperation.

Nature-sleeps
are heaven's vitamins:
the breath of plants
mingles with human inhalations,
trees calm
and dirt heals.

Breathe deep
the healing rhythms
of earth's fauna
and flora.
Respire
as ocean waves
roll in upon sand
then suction 
seaward
again
and 
again.

Sleep
and trust.
Sleep and trust.
Sleep
is
trust.

OUTSIDE -Tim Knipp - On the Mountain - Matt. 5, Ezra 27:16, Is. 2, Lu. 6:12

July 22, 2018

Notes from the Texas road. Thanks for the sermons on the Hillcrest website