He is a brittle, crazy glass;
Yet in thy temple thou dost him afford,
This glorious and transcendent place,
To be a window, through thy grace.
But when thou dost anneal in glass thy story,
Making thy life to shine within
The holy preachers, then the light and glory
More reverend grows, and more doth win;
Which else shows waterish, bleak and thin.
Doctrine and life, colors and light, in one
When they combine and mingle, bring
A strong regard and awe; but speech alone
Doth vanish like a flaring thing,
And in the ear, not conscience, ring.
 |
| (source) Sainte-Chapelle in Paris best. stained. glass. |
The last stanza is about how explosive the combination of doctrine and life are. Think about it. It's easy to say you believe something, but to LIVE it is what brings the "strong regard and awe". (There's nothing beautiful about stained glass on a dark night.) You can say something all you want, but if you don't live it out, then it just rings in people's ears. If you live it out, it lives in their consciences. What a sobering challenge.
But really, it's about stained glass windows. I need more of those in my life! "Colors and light".
---
I memorized this poem, starting during a very long wait in an ultrasound office. My mind was begging for something to do other than thinking about my baby being dead inside of me. So I memorized. And it helped.
The message of this poem was very comforting to me that week. I believed (doctrine!) God would bring his glory (which is my good) even from this ugliness. That even though this world has been stained by sin and death, God has a redemptive purpose in everything that happens to his children. That Romans 8:28 is true. God was very near to me during that week to give me faith and the grace I needed to keep going and believing through the pain.
Now I am in the walk of grief for my Baby who I will never hold, hug, or name on earth. I am asking questions like, how do you love someone you don't know? What do I do with all this love and longing that has no living recipient? How do I honor my Baby's life and keep on living? This is not just about healing and disappointed hopes. This is about a life. What about that life, Lord? Can miscarriage really be that common? What about all those babies, Lord?
These are what I call 'hard thoughts' about God. Where my thoughts often have to face the music...the problem of pain and suffering in this world. This is the 'life' part of the poem. It's easy to simply say that I believe God is good and things have purpose. But how do I believe and live when my womb is painfully empty and my heart is torn in two?
There's comfort that these questions aren't the end of my story. I can still come back to the gospel. Once I had not been given mercy, and man do I deserve judgement! But now, because of Jesus, I have been given mercy. My life and my eternity depends on that mercy. Jesus was a real person. Out of love, he lived here on this crummy planet! He showed us what love was and invited people to come to him and be satisfied in their deepest longings. God DIED for me. And He says about a million times in the Bible that he LOVES me. So if the cross is true then his heart is kind.
So here is my tension. Think about the mercy and the kind heart of God, while also thinking about my baby who died and the crushing weight of that reality. Please pray that I would think often about the mercy, and truly believe he does love me in the crushing weight moments.
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him...
No comments:
Post a Comment