Meditations: August 2025

Three things sing to their maker;
Four lift their voice to heaven:
The songbird lauds at morning
When he wakes to your beauty;
The cicada chants antiphon all afternoon,
Calling to you for his mate;
The coyote cries at night
Till you satisfy him with food;
And the lips of your servants praise
As they wait for you.

(In the style of Prov 30.)

My soul is very sorrowful, even to death.
My Lord, remain here and watch over me,
Far better than I have waited for you.

(Matt 26:28)

We are taught to wait on the Lord as slaves
So we will know how to attend to the Father as sons.

(From many places. Let’s say Mal 1:6.)

In the beginning was the Word,
And the Word was with God,
And the Word was God.
He was with God in the beginning
And without him was nothing made that was made.
Were all his deeds written [in words]
I suppose the world itself could not contain the books.

(John 1:1-2; 21:25)

But if what not I want, even I exactly this do, no longer even I myself bring it about, but that which dwells in me, sin. I deduce then this law, I who want for me to do the good: that for me the evil itself lies near. For I delight myself with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in my members, itself waging war against the law of my mind and leading me captive in the law of sin, that which exists in my members. I, miserable man! Who me himself will rescue out of the body of this death? But thanks to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then myself, even I indeed with the mind serve the law of God, howbeit with the flesh the law of sin. Therefore now no condemnation is for those in Christ Jesus.

(Rom 7:20-8:1, translated super literally but doubtless very badly. “That which dwells in me, sin,” which is the exact order of the words, was too good to stop for.)

The hyperbole of the hyperbole of ages, the burden of glory

(2 Cor 4:17, also literal)

Mine the steps,
Yours the path:
Lead me in the way everlasting.
Be the voice behind me saying,
This is the way, walk in it.

(Jer 10:23; Ps 139:24; Isa 30:21)

“God doesn’t waste anything.”

(A friend from church)

When Jacob wrestled the Lord,
The Lord maimed the part of him that wrestled.
He said, you have striven with men, Jacob,
And with God: your name is Israel.
He walked with a limp,
No longer able to strive against man;
Should we suppose he also ceased struggling
(Not against but) with God?
—
Clinging, Jacob wept and sought his favor:
The Lord cleansed strife from him
But redeemed his wrestling.
Isaiah was undone in woe:
The Lord cleansed uncleanness from his lips
But redeemed his speech.
Our Lord sweat drops of blood in submissive prayer:
The Lord cleansed our sin by his death
But redeemed his life.
—
O Lord, remove my iniquity,
But redeem me out of it.
Do not destroy what works sin,
But transform it for and into holiness.

(Gen 32:22-32; Hos 12:4; Isa 6:1-8; Luke 22:41-44)

Heaven is his throne,
Earth his footstool.
How kind he is even to his footstool!

(Isa 66:1)

I will take my petition to the king:
If I perish, I perish;
If I die, I die to the Lord;
Extend the rod of your kindness, O king.

(Esther 4:11, 16; Rom 14:8)