Faith
Light and Silence
Lord, there is
No darkness too dark for
Your Light. There is
No noise too loud for
Your Silence.
There is only me,
Lord, and it is I who
Must ultimately choose
And decide…
The Tree of Life
It shone in gold, but
Not just typical gold, but rather
Otherworldly, ornamental,
Finest gold, relocated
From the Garden of
Eden, an earthly
Tree of Life set free
From the consequences
Of the bondage
Of Original Sin, and
Now able to renounce
Night and to proclaim
Daybreak – and to
Promise each weary soul
That hope lives and
Its green shoot glistens.
“Again I tell you: it is much harder
For a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God
Than for a camel to go through
The eye of a needle. . . ”
Matthew 19:24
At Heaven’s Gate
At last I am at the outskirts of
Heaven’s gate, and all remaining for me
Is to cross o’er this narrow,
Tremulous bridge, this bridge of
Terrifying choice – whether, in faith,
To God’s will to totally submit,
Or to throw chaff wildly
Into the wind, and, like a camel, to
Try to thread the eye of a
Needle, in the reckless hope of
Receiving forgiveness from the fingers
Of Mercy’s Seamstress. . .
“If you only knew what God gives. . .
You would ask Him and He
Would give you living water. . .”
John 4: 10
Transiting Montana
Enroute from Judea to Galilee
And so beneath a billowing
Montana blue sky,
Jesus momentarily paused
Along an aquamarine
Riverbank to rest and recline. . .
When approached Him
A burdened Samaritan
Woman carrying an empty
Jar brimming with the
Bleakness of her despair. . .
And He called out,
“Daughter, it is no longer
Necessary to cloak
Your heart in such a hardened
Disguise, but to drink
You, instead, these living
Waters, and your name will
Be washed, and your
Thirst eternally satisfied.”
One Day
Click for meditationRegarding "One Day"
I was recently doing
Some reading, and came into my mind
The clear phrase, “One day,”
And right afterwards more
Words, “The sun came back out.”
It was a statement about the
Lifting of darkness from
Someone’s life, anyone’s life,
Each of our lives. . . It is
So easy to become distracted
And ensnared by almost
Anything in this frenzied world,
And we can find ourselves,
Directly or indirectly,
In a place of endless night. . .
The malaise can seem
Without hope, but as the
Verse says, “One day, the sun
Came back out.” The accompanying
Poem is about that ‘day.’
It is a poem about how
An affliction of any sort can
Be lifted from us, and
When it is, our eyes are opened
Again to the beauty which
Surrounds us, especially
Those things beyond
And outside ourselves. . .
And to take this one step
Further, and to apply a
Spiritual perspective to this,
The lifting of an affliction
Can occur just when the
Particular condition or situation
Has pinned us to our
Lowest point, when our
Weakness is at its greatest, when
Our prayer is at its most
Earnest and desperate, and
When we are the most
Dependent upon God.
It can be then that the
Creator lifts our burden with
One finger, and from our
Lips rise up the sweetest scents and
Sounds of a paean’s song.
Leo Carroll
July 30, 2022
The sun came back out,
And somehow seemed lessened
The darkness of the shade,
Not ever to be forgotten,
Of course, but the sun as dear
Reminder that nothing
Was ever meant to bear
Unrelieved the pain. . .Yes, the
Sun came out, and Light and Breeze
Walked togeth’r in the day,
Basking in grace’s gift —
That in love and mercy God
Had writ each’s name. . .