He sings over you

After Zephaniah 3:14-20 

Forget the humiliation,

forget the shame.

The Lord is singing

over you.

 

He takes away

the judgments

against you.

He wipes away

the enemies

arrayed against

you. He gathers

the weak, the outcast,

the oppressed

in his arms,

transforming shame

into praise.

 

He gathers us in,

he exalts over us,

he sings our renown,

he sings our praise.

 

Photograph by Steven Erixon via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

“At the Cemetery,” poem by Robert Cording – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

Honey: A healing gift from the Creator – Creation.com. 

 

When Your Boss Expects You to Lie – John Piper at Desiring God.

 

“Fight the Good Fight,” hymn by John Samuel Bewley Monsell – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

A Given – poem by Seth Lewis.

Joseph and the Grace of Forgiveness

The entire spring issue of Cultivating Oaks is devoted to the theme of grace. Published are stories by Lancia Smith, Malcolm Guite, Annie Nardone, Junius Johnson, Adam Nettesheim, Amy Malskeit, Steven Garber, Corey Latta, Tom Darin Liskey, Nicole Howe, Amelia Freidline, Lara D’Entremont, and several others. 

For me, reading a very familiar Bible story – the account of Joseph in the Book of Genesis – led me in an unexpected direction of grace. You can read the story, “Joseph and the Grace of Forgiveness,” at Cultivating Oaks Press. 

 

Photograph by Michael Olsen via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Everyday practices, revoked

After Matthew 5:38-42 

Everyday practices refuted,

revoked, redrawn, recast.

They are (in order):

first, an eye for an eye,

a tooth for a tooth

   (so proclaims the law).

Second, a slap on the right

cheek now requires 

an offering of the left cheek.

A lawsuit to take your shirt

becomes an opportunity 

to offer your coat as well.

Forced to go one mile,

respond by going two.

Confronted by a beggar

or asked to make a loan,

give

joyfully

with love

with the love 

you’ve been given.

 

Photograph by Joshua Earle via Unsplash. Used with permission.

The new way

After Matthew 5:38-42 

He sits on that hill,

speaking softly, firmly,

as one with authority

because he is One

with authority. He speaks

of a new path to follow,

a path that is not a choice

but a mandate. Revenge 

is put aside; no more

repayment in kind. In fact,

instead of revenge, now

you respond with mercy,

you respond with love,

you respond in the same way

that you are forgiven. Wrongs

you commit are set aside,

forgiven, forgotten, you are

made new. And you respond

the same way to those who

wrong you.

You forgive.

You forget.

You show love.

You show mercy.

 

Photograph by Benjamin Wedemeyer via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“Something Better” by Dustin Renz

Tom Schneider’s life is a mess. His wife Julie has left him, taking their 4-year-old daughter Kayla and moved in with her mother. He’s sinking deeper into depression. And he’s still trying to escape the years of physical abuse he and his mother endured at the ends of his father.

Tom is one big mess of anger, hurt, and depression. He’s got a single lifeline – the desire to be reunited with his family. But that looks increasingly impossible. Then a letter from his father arrives, asking to see him. Instead, Tom flies from Michigan to his boyhood home near Atlanta, and a slow process of forgiveness and reconciliation begins. But will it last?

Something Better by Dustin Renz is the story of Tom Schneider, but it could be the story of many of us. It’s about the damage that happens in families continuing down through the generations. It’s about the struggle to hold a failing marriage together. It’s about learning to forgive and learning to be forgiven. And it’s a story about how a young man comes to faith, and how his faith changes him before it begins to change his life and the people around him.

Dustin Renz

It’s also the story of any of us caught in a web of the past and our own mistakes, problems, and sins.

Renz is the Associate and Outreach Pastor at the Kettering Assembly of God in Kettering, Ohio, the founder of Make Way Ministries, and a contributing writer and speaker for Pure Life Ministries in Dry Ridge, Kentucky. He is also the author of Pile of Masks: Exposing Christian Hypocrisy (2016). Renz received a B.S. degree in church ministries from Southeastern University in Lakeland, Florida. He and his family live in Dayton, Ohio. 

Using an alternating series of flashbacks and contemporary scenes, Something Better points toward how each of us can, well, find something better in faith.

Top photograph by Eric Ward via Unsplash. Used with permission.

We are contained

After Ephesians 1:7-12

We are contained within

him, the blood shed and

flowing around us; it is

the blood alone that is

the conduit of forgiveness,

that blood alone that is

the channel of redemption

that blood alone that is

the sources of the riches of grace.

It is all lavished, a feast,

a never-ending banquet

of grace, our place

at the table selected

for us.

Photograph by Anton Darius | Sollers via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Apology

An apology

that begins

with if

is no apology.

But does it merit

forgiveness?

Photograph by Maury Salas via Unsplash. Used with permission.