Meditations: March 2025

If “he who began a good work in us
Will see it through to completion
At the day of Jesus Christ,”
Then what does maturation look like
Between Death and Day?
What work goes on in the night of Heaven?

(Phil 1:6; Rev 4:8; 7:15; 22:5)

Meditations: February 2026

Though I inherit the wilderness,
The Lord makes streams in the desert.
He makes the desert a garden
The garden a forest.
Surely my inheritance is beautiful.

(Isa 35:6; 32:15; Ps 16:6)

The work of earth fits us for heaven.
Does the rest of heaven fit us for a glorified earth?

Fear not, O seed, to perish in the spring.

(1 Cor 15:36)

Not so many meditations this month. Part of it is that these meditations are a scratchpad (commonplace book?) for ideas that may or may not be employed in more structured poetry, and contra normal MO, I have far more than one poem cooking at the moment. Almost overwhelmingly so. So a lot of my contemplative activity is not curbed so much as delayed.

Additionally, while school and family emergency have taken much of time for creative contemplation, they have not taken my meditation. Chronicles from my daily reading is full of the steadfast love and faithfulness of the Lord, and after that finished up, Job 33:27 has much occupied my thoughts these last couple weeks: “I sinned and perverted what was right, and it was not repaid to me!” What incredible joy—Elihu says it is properly a song—to be thus forgiven by such a wonderful God.

Meditations: January 2026

When Jesus slept in the stern,
Slumbering as the wind and waves rose,
Unwaking as water filled the boat,
Was it because he discerned his father’s footsteps in the storm?
Was he pondering his work
And dreaming of his mighty deeds?
“When the waters saw you, my Father,
When the waters saw you they were afraid
And the deeps trembled.
The clouds poured out water—
The skies gave forth thunder—
Your arrows flashed on every side—
The crash of your thunder was in the whirlwind—
Your lightnings lighted up the world—
The earth trembled and shook.
Your way was through the sea,
Your path through the great waters,
Yet your footprints were unseen:
You led your people like a flock
By the hand of the Son of Man.”

(Mark 4:35-41; Ps 77:12, 16-20)

This and the below have been my meditations for the past month. There are fewer this month; I’ve had to learn again to focus on the more profitable than the less. But what profit still the Lord blesses me with.

Meditations: December 2025

Lord, I have nothing to offer anyone
But my sin and your grace.
Be mighty, please.

God is spirit; man is flesh.
Thank you that there is flesh in heaven:
An advocate for man to God.
Thank you that there is Spirit in me:
An advocate for God to man.

(1 John 2:1; John 15:26)

I am slowly getting caught up from the holidays. Part of that is that I am finally posting my December meditations almost a week late. There are not so many of them, for the same reason as the lateness of their posting. That’s all right. The first half of December was busy before I got the flu, and the second was filled with gratitude for family in town. I’m happy that things are settling as the new year begins, however, and I’ve almost recovered my routine. The rest of these little thoughts:

Meditations: November 2025

Thank you that your grace in me balances
The debt I owe to mercy.

The apostle prayed for strength
To comprehend the love of God:
Kindness so rich it must be borne.
If we receive suffering from the Lord,
Shall we not also endure blessing?

(Eph 3:18; Job 2:10; Jer 33:9; 2 Cor 4:17)

Meditations: October 2025

The thorn pricks to wound and tear;
Grace’s needle pricks to stitch back together.

(2 Cor 12:7-9)

Crucify my anxiety on this truth:
The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases.

(Lam 3:22)

[[Why did they bring the adulteress to Jesus?
Why did he not condemn her?
Did she, understanding the weight of sin,
Beg to be judged by the friend of sinners?]]

[[John 7:53-8:11]]

Meditations: September 2025

The Lord has said that he would dwell in thick darkness,
And such is my heart:
The thick darkness in which he dwells.
His mercies are new every morning;
One morning, his mercies will not need to be new.
That day will never end.

(2 Chron 6:1; Lam 3:22-23; Rev 21:25)

That is actually the last, chronologically, of the meditations below, but it is a wonderful summary of my month.

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)

Meditations: July 2025

Lord, you are a good father:
To none who asks for bread do you give stones;
You do not give a serpent for fish.
Am I allowed to pray like I’m five?
In childish exactness, with absurd expectation?
Be pleased to answer ridiculous petitions;
Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done.

(Matt 7:9-11; Luke 11:5-8; Luke 22:42)

Meditations: June 2025

Lord, make me a tree planted by rivers of water,
Bearing fruit in my season, unwithered in leaf,
With my fruitful vine tangled around me
And all my olive shoots at my table.

(Ps 1:3; 128:3)

I have been trying to meditate more on Scripture, inspired by and with help from a chapter in Tim Keller’s book Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God. The above and below have been my recurring meditations this month. Foremost on this list is Ps 123, which however I do not include because I have not altered it. I wait for you, O Lord. All else is excerpted from, remixed from, or (thunderhead) inspired by the text of Scripture as I seek to apply it to my life. I don’t remember every reference, but if you see a weird turn of phrase, you can probably search the ESV to find its origin.

The Love of Christ

How broad is the love of Christ?
It has gone out to the ends of the earth.
How wide it spreads!
As far as the east is from the west,
So far does he remove transgression.

How long is the love of Christ?
Stretching from eternity past to evermore.
How far it extends!
While we were still a long way off,
Compassion felt, ran, and embraced.

How high is the love of Christ?
High as heaven above earth—
How lofty he dwells!—
So great is his mercy,
Blessing us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

How deep is the love of Christ?
As deep as Himself.
How unsearchable his thoughts, how inscrutable his ways!
The secret things belong to the Lord our God,
But his revelation of himself is for us forever.

Give us strength, O Christ, to know thy love.

—5/19/25. On Eph 3:18.

Meditations: Summer 2023

When the devil accuses
When sin lies at the door
When doubt intrudes
When fear creeps in
Then
With a flash of inspiration
With a whisper loud as thunder
Spirit of adoption speaks:
I am a son of God the Father Almighty
And brother to Jesus Christ, his Son, our Lord
I am a trophy of his grace.

(Last line shamelessly stolen from an SBC baptizee, 5/14/23)

What is a star
But a light that draws the eye to darkness
Without which we cannot appreciate
The brightness of the sun.
We will be the stars.

Meditations: December 2022

God exists.
Best to submit to the fact.
Or will a blind man rail against the sky
Because someone says it is blue?

I will not permit this rock
To praise louder than I.

Shame II

I do not know the man.
I said I do not know him.
I do not know the man, goddammit.
[Croweth the cock?]

Lord, you know I love you.
Lord, you know I love you.
[Knoweth he, that though I think I do, I not?]
Lord, you know all things;
You know I love you.

[Lord, if thou command,
I shall feed thy lambs.]

—10/19/22

Funereal Thoughts

Tonight, I to the fun’ral-parlor went,
There to see the body of a saint,
Who, two days past, this mortal coil did leave
And to the arms of Christ, her Lord, was sent.
And as I stood, surrounded thus
By friends, who many months I had not met,
Both young and old, who came as I—
Their last respects to pay,
I wondered if any of them felt as I—
Sad, and ready now to weep and mourn—
Though not for her, who unto Paradise
Was giv’n, nor even for her husband,
Who for more than sixty years hath had her.
The one no heartache knows,
For she in everlasting pleasure rests;
The other, tho’ old, is strong
And shows no outward sign of loss.
No, the reason that I give for feeling thus—
As though I should betake myself to bed
And cry for hours, if not days—is this:
Sometimes the world seems joyous to me,
As if there were no care or end of good,
But now, surrounded thus, by relatives and friends,
Her body in the casket, gently lit
(How odd the earthly temple seems,
When, bereft of spirit, it lies still—
It seems made of wax, and molded by a master)—
It is now that I remember that from dust came men,
And thence they go again—
That nothing here forever will remain,
But all is doomed to sometime its end know.
How can I be happy in this world and body of death?
Tomorrow, the church's hallowed halls
I, with my presence, shall grace,
And there, with all these people I have seen tonight
And more besides, will learn of her life—
When she was born, when she wed,
How she trusted Christ as Head—
Meaningless to the rest of the world,
But not to us, the few who knew her.
And then I will enter depression, as I have done
After every other funeral that I ever attended—
Is it wrong to feel thus?
To mourn not that she died,
But that death lives?
It seems to me that ‘tis not right,
For “death is swallowed up in victory,”
Yet something in me also says ‘tis right,
For did not even Christ, our Lord,
Also groan inside, that this world
In sin should so exist?
I know not, but with this hope console myself—
However dim, at times, it may be seen—
This world is not my final stopping-place,
But go I on to worlds as yet unseen,
Where Christ shall wipe all teardrops from my face,
And I shall worship Him, my Master
And my Saviour, in the light of His glory.

—12 May 2010