On Word Law and Life: A Lamp

Posted on December 31, 2014 by Tom Bolton

On Word Law and Life was my 2011-2012 devotional poem based on Psalm 119. I have been reprinting one or two stanzas each Sunday leading to the end of the year, and here is the finale.

WW. Exhausted, Waiting With Hope

Wronged by others in my life, I am wrung out, and
Words upset me in spite of my judgement, but your
words speak gently to me.
Waiting here with hope,
I find joy in your presence, like a child with new treasures spilling out of his pockets.
Where do I go when I am wrapped up in lies? Don’t I know when to come back to your words?
While listening to, and searching for, God’s words,
I am joyfully blessed. Joy in the Word!
Joy in your word!
Why do I keep searching for lasting peace?
Where do I find peace, where I will not stumble?
Waiting here with hope, I
wait out my weariness. I study your word.
Written instructions often turn me off, but
I listen to God’s word as best I can.
Written in front of you, with no words edited out,
Whole lives are there for review by you.

Y. Yet I cry; Search for Me


Yet I cry for your help, as I come to you open-palmed,
yearning to understand your words, even as I struggle;
Yelling my questions to you in my mind’s eye,
your word is a life rope, dangling close to me.
Yelping like a dog when I am down, I
yell loudly to praise you, God, when I am hearing you clearly.
Yearning for you in my life, I write these words to you:
I am joyfully blessed! Joy in the Word!
You are the lamplight to my path, and my helping hand, God-of-grace,
and joyfully I follow you.
Yearning for your salvation,
I see you as my great teacher tonight.
Yeast for my life, help me rise:
New life in your penetrating words, Lord, teach me.
Yet I have often wandered from your path, glorious God.
Be my shepherd, and I will remember your words, written joyfully on my heart, and return.

Yet still and open, I am joyfully blessed!
Joy in the Word! Blessed!
Joy in your Word.

© Tom Bolton, 10 March 2012, Milwaukee USA

This poem is dedicated, in fond memory, to my late Disciple Bible teacher, Jim Marsch

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The Light

Posted on December 28, 2014 by Tom Bolton

On First John 1 from June 2013.

Tom Bolton's avatarHopeful

I live in brightest light and that light

Cleanses my skin and warms me like no other place.

From the beginning, that place was here, and yet

I had to find it—even though it was here to see.

There is no darkness here—none at all—

And that encourages me and affirms my confidence.

Yet I still recall when the darkness seemed

a place to hide.

It was a lie in that darkness.

I lied there too often. I sought the darkness.

Too often I was confused about whom I was,

Where I was,

Whose I was.

In the light, life is rich and lush.

Here I feel the warmth, and I grow.

The sun soothes my skin and warms my heart.

And here I am alive, and filled with joy.

And it is here that I look forward to eternal life.

In the light, we love and we care.

We…

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On Word Law and Life: Wicked Loss

Posted on December 28, 2014 by Tom Bolton

On Word Law and Life was my 2011-2012 devotional poem based on Psalm 119. I have been reprinting one or two stanzas each Sunday leading to the end of the year, and I will publish again the ending on New Year’s Eve.

040_01_0121_BSTD

W. Wicked Loss

Where do I find this suffering? How far do I go?
Wandering farther than I dreamed, I still hold your teachings in me.
Wind your words around me. Save me! Toss me your rope.
The Word always was, always will be: New life.
Wicked ones lose out; far from the word, they are lost.
Way, away from you, they are lost–weighed down, lawless.
Wonders surprise me regularly, Great God.
You gave me a new life when I could scarcely imagine it.
Wicked ones still intrude in my life, and I seethe, but
Written deep in me are words that miraculously sustain me.
Wicked ones disgust me, and then the
Wicked ones are losing. I see it and don’t see it.
Wayward sinners–all of us–but the ones who refuse to repent,
they are lost for good. They missed the words. They are set out to dry in the wind.
Willful still and open, I am joyfully blessed!
Joy in the Word! Blessed!
Joy in your Word.

(c) Tom Bolton, Milwaukee, February 2012

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Abstract and Concrete

Posted on December 27, 2014 by Tom Bolton

I had forgotten this piece.

Tom Bolton's avatarHopeful

Bay window in Christ Church Hall

As I was reading Mark 3:

In a Concrete World

Some days in this world, the law is such that the silence is deafening,
or comments are shouted so harshly that ears ache and minds are crushed.
The doing that puts us in the midst of real doing
May be costly doing.
So, do we yet save lives?
Do we get gritty?
Scratching with hens out back, do we fill our nails with hard grit?
May we freely endure embarrassment?
How dirty are my hands each day?
We learned this in school, no?
Were these messages inside our textbook covers?
Some days, the messages of school days are lost.
Some days, the messages seem different, long lost.
But in the midst of this concrete world,
Christ is with us.
The doing that puts us in the midst of real doing
is blessed doing.
Beside us, the Master is doing.
In…

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Devotions to Our God in the Manger 2014: Fulfilled

Posted on December 24, 2014 by Tom Bolton

Luke 1

A D V E N T  2 0 1 4:    D E V O T I O N S   T O   O U R   G O D   I N   T H E   M A N G E R

Week 4                                                                                                                 Human

English: Uploaded from : http://upload.wikimed...

           Fulfilled

And now the promise is fulfilled,
the Word is complete,
and each sinner dies before God, and
each proclamation creates new life from old death.
The promise is fulfilled at Christmas,
and we are there in this
God-time,
aware in this real time,
alive in this time that does not stand still.
The great miracle has been proclaimed,
and we live it beside this tiny manger,
with this adored baby.
No mighty one tonight,
but a baby is in our view,
and all power is there, obscured in humanity.
Amidst sinfulness, sin dies; God goes there.
In weakness and illness, wretched ones die; God comes in.
In the misery of lonely death, the light shines.
God is there.
Some come in loneliness, in long nights.
Tonight, the light shines, our God lives, and
I am alive and filled with joy.
Under this tree, I live;
the promise is fulfilled.
I too shine by the manger.

(c) Tom Bolton, 21 December 2013, Deep in Divine Intervention

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Thomas Kemper’s Mission Musings for Advent

Posted on December 23, 2014 by Tom Bolton

Thomas Kemper is the General Secretary for Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church- See more at: http://www.umcmission.org/learn-about-us/news-and-stories/2014/december/1218becomingkairos#sthash.jUiL2y1D.dpuf

He regularly writes an essay–Mission Musings–and I particularly am moved by his Advent message this year.

You may see the full message here:

http://www.umcmission.org/learn-about-us/news-and-stories/2014/december/1218becomingkairos

Here are some paragraphs that particularly speak to me:

Becoming “Kairos” in Times of Suffering

By Thomas Kemper*

It is hard to share the joyful Christmas message in a world of so much suffering and uncertainty, yet in this time of year we so clearly know the need for the rebirth of Christ, a birth to respond to the needs of this world.

Recently, 145 students and teachers were gunned down at a school in Pakistan. Thousands of persons of all ages are sick and dying from Ebola in West Africa.  The United States is weighed down by an epidemic of the killing of unarmed black males by white police officers.

……………………

In the midst of the heaviness weighing on God’s world, I find words of promise and assurance in the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, especially his Letters and Papers from Prison.  As is well-known, Bonhoeffer was a Christian pastor and activist who spoke out against the Nazi regime. At the time, many of his friends were concerned he would be imprisoned; they wanted him to play it safe in order to help rebuild the church after the war. He accepted refuge in New York City, living just a few hundred feet from where my office is located.  But he could not isolate himself from what was happening to the people of his homeland. In the Daily Moravian Watchword he read, “The one who believes, does not flee.” After a few weeks in the US, Bonhoeffer returned in 1939 to Germany, where he would eventually be jailed and finally hanged for his anti-Nazi work.

From prison, Bonhoeffer wrote, “Life in a prison cell may well be compared to Advent . . . one waits, hopes, and does this, that, or the other – things that are really of no consequence – the door is shut, and can only be opened from the outside.”

…………………………………………………….

As we listen and journey together in community, the Child is born again. Listen once more to Bonhoeffer:

But now it is true that in three days,

Christmas will come again.

The great transformation will once again happen.

God would have it so.

Out of the waiting, hoping, longing world,

A world will come in which the promise is given.

All crying will be stilled. No tears shall flow.

No lonely sorrow shall afflict us anymore.

– See more at: http://www.umcmission.org/learn-about-us/news-and-stories/2014/december/1218becomingkairos#sthash.jUiL2y1D.dpuf

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Devotions to Our God in the Manger 2014: In Light

Posted on December 23, 2014 by Tom Bolton

A D V E N T   2 0 1 4:   D E V O T I O N S    T  O  O U R   G O D   I N   T H E   MA N G E R

Week 4                                                                                                                          Human

Ask, Seek, Knock

The Light and the Man

Word. God. Light. Life.  Light.
Human, really human,
and human nature is illumined by
the light.
We too are called to be really human,
God-made human,
God-loved human,
and the light rests on something deep,
and deeper in each of us.
Joy in the Word!
Joy to the World!
God has lifted his love above
everything we can imagine.
Love lies in the manger.
The light shines.
The word is made light, and
as it was in the beginning,
the word is God.
This is a baby in the manger–tonight–
beyond our understanding, and
brighter than we see sometimes.
Again, joy in the Word!
Joy to our World!

(c) Tom Bolton, 20 December 2013, Tippecanoe

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