Its Good Friday today 18th of April 2025

The cross weighs heavy

As it did  

And the very thought

Darkens the day

With grief

A dying

Before living

STILLBORN

 Do you know the pain 

Of an empty crib

With a rattle that never shakes

And a cry that never was heard? 

 

Can you feel the tug of a 

A kick that was not birthed

And now lies in the earth

Somewhere still

 

Can you bear the weight 

Of an unborn womb that was filled 

But now the wind blows through? 

 

Will that uncried wail

Wake you at night? 

And will your breast reach 

For a mouth that will never suck?

 

Will it? 

It will be like the wind in the trees

Unheard, yet whipping

The twigs of your heartstrings

Leaving a wake unseen to all

Except to you. 

 

Pain

Grief

Quiet

Still

 

The rattle in the crib is stilled

Hush and taste the tears

 

 BURN OUT

Frazzled and fried

Fumes rising

From ambitions pyre

Smoke of charred aspirations

Dead

 

One foot before

Another

Mindless movement

Orbiting exhausted

Cells

 

Fog

Floating headward

Corrupting direction

Incapable coherence

Lost

 

Service in my name

Not His

If we are devoted to the cause of humanity, we shall soon be crushed and broken-hearted, for we shall often meet with more ingratitude from men than we would from a dog; but if our motive is love to God, no ingratitude can hinder us from serving our fellow men.

When we realize that Jesus Christ has served us to the end of our meanness, our selfishness, and sin, nothing that we meet with from others can exhaust our determination to serve men for His sake. 

My Utmost for His Highest (Oswald Chambers)

Thankful

 Thankful 

I am thankful for my station

Grateful for where you have put me

For I did not grow into where i am now

I am budded, trimmed and grafted

My faeet did not carry me to my doorstep

Nor did my thinking chart my course

I am placed and stationed

Gauged and positioned

To fill the space i now occupy

To rise to fill the pan now baking

That is my task, and mine alone

Gauged and governed by my God who sees

Unbounded aspiration

And unintended elevation

Can strip resources from ascendance

Leaving an  untethered blimp like spectacle

Before a disaster orchestrated by ambition

Lazy apathy and unfaithful dereliction

Can bury me with briars of resentment

Sown on a grave that was never to be mine

Tended by those under my care 

For whom i was never there

Growing where i am put, 

Ah there is limitless possibility

to fill the sixty seconds of time well run

To harrow, water, weed and build

A garden of blooms, remembered hue

Nourished, cared for, faithful and true

To hear that master say

On his evening stroll

Well done my loved one, now my friend

Well done, well done, right till the end

 

The outer court

 

Smoke wafts softly upwards

Lifted by the silence within

An offering, from the brazen altar

In the kernel of my kiln

 

The sanctuary is cocooned safe

In the centre of space

Protected from the glare and blare

Sentineled placidity and garrisoned grace

 

Ah but the tumult at the outer wall 

Bashing at the gates of court

Smashes like sea breakers at a dike

Dead to consequence, dumb to stridor

Clamor, cacophony, mindless rancour

 

Dealing with density calls for recruits at the gate

To stop, to hold

To guide, to scold

To cajole and convince

And those multiple cacophonies multiplied

With reverberating replies

Can commandeer rushing, clashing, stamping or bashing

To just hold the line  from a fractious fate

 

The outer court is where character is tested

With mettle forged in the kiln at the core

When it shatters and shards at the outer gate

It  retreats returns to be forged once again

Drawing steel from blood from a saviors veins

 

One day my sword will hold

And not demon me with its thrust

For that is when it is best wielded

When its cut does not bleed but forges a fire of its own

And the hand that holds it needs not burn with shame of its arc

But become a bridge of hope

Held out to a clamorous  wanting world 

Clueless of secret forges unlit in the dark

That glow hidden quietly in the waiting 

 

 

 

If I were to say

If I were to say

So many things I would have liked to say.

A smile

A look

A lift of the eyebrow 

If I were to say

Explain 

A sunrise

A sunset

Pain

Joy grief

Wounding

Bleeding

Cake icing

Curling

Full stop

Comma sometimes

Space

Reaching unrecorded

Dumb

Shard splintered time

Held

Falling

No tinkle or crash

Dead child

Coffin chortled

Unrisen 

Unloved

Love reversing away

Hope for another day

From sterile sheets

Polite trackless desert 

Of not having been

The darkness still holds the stars 

Quiet

That night in another garden

JOHNS GOSPEL: 3

Nicodemus was a Pharisee. He comes at night obviously desiring privacy. The painting by James Tissot (1836-1902) depicts a close and personal encounter. 

Nicodemus does not actually ask Jesus a question. He makes a statement, but Jesus replies. Jesus goes straight to the heart of Nicodemus and tells him what is the question lurking there, the question that Jews had been holding their breath to ask for generations – “Is He the one?” Jesus does not answer this directly, but tells him about process.

It is one of the few times that Jesus uses the must word. This word excludes alternatives. You must be born again.  The Son of Man must be lifted up. 

The literal translation of this is “born from the top” see Mathew 27:51 (anothen). This is a  process of regeneration, renewal, which comes from God. This process has been prophesied in Ezekiel 36:25-27.

This process  involves both an external and internal part. The external,  of water, or ritual purification by cleansing with water, is a reference to baptism, which is an external sign of an internal faith. And the spirit is the work of cleansing on the inside, which is done by God. 

John has emphasized this being the work of God many times:

            (Joh_1:13; 1Jo_3:9;1Jo_4:7; 1Jo_5:1,1Jo_5:4, 1Jo_5:8)

Nicodemus is not able to comprehend this and asks a very down to earth question on the exact process of this rebirth.

Jesus tries to lift his eyes up to the working of God by giving the allegory of the wind. 

The word for wind is the pneumos, which is the same word used for the working of the Holy Spirit. We see this word at work in Genesis in the process of creation. Jesus is saying that this spririt of God is still at work in the hearts of men, still about working its ways, albeit the origin and process of it cannot be seen, even like the wind. The effects are seen and are tangible. 

Nicodemus asks a genuine question, at the heart of growing into belief. “How can these things be?”. This question is at the core of the beginning of belief, the kindling to a life of blazing faith. It is wonder expressed and intelligence attempting to understand the workings of an alien kingdom. Education often breeds skepticism, and knowledge can paradoxically insulate from understanding unless we are open to permit this questioning of our private core beliefs. “How can these things be?” is a good place to start. 

Nicodemus is still not able to get it. Then Jesus refers him back to his origin and background and asks him why he cannot get it, when he should be able to. 

Notice that Jesus uses the plural when He says “We” He is probably referring to the trinity at this time speaking about the testimony. Testimony is very important to accept fact in Jewish tradition, and it becomes necessary for two or three witnesses. Hence Jesus now gives Nicodemus the witness of the others involved, the Father and the Spirit. 

He then begins to introduce himself, as the one who has ascended and now is descended on earth, the Messiah himself. And he opens to Nicodemus a passage he would be very familiar with, from Numbers 21:7-9, when Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness. 

He then gives Nicodemus the knock down revelation – “Even so must the Son of Man be lifted up”. 

Jesus then opens the way up for all when he says – “ all who believe (pisteoo, = trust, commit, entrust)  will be saved. So this process of salvation is opened up for anyone who believes. The plan for salvation has been revealed. 

And this fact now divides all of humanity into two by their response to this revelation, those who believe and are saved, and those who don’t and stand condemned by their refusal to believe. Refusal to believe is as active as believing. 

Those who love darkness are those who by a process of repetitive choices, choose evil, and choose to stay away from the light. Those who come into the light are those who do precisely that, who move into the light. The word for come is erchomai (the verb, stressing the action rather than the arrival which is hekko).

The word for “do” is prasso (repetitive and habitual action)as contrasted with one action. So it is a process of rehearsing or repeating sin actively which keeps people in the dark, as contrasted with a process of coming into the light, and basically allowing God to tackle it, expose it and for us to live the consequences of these choices. Coming into the light is also a repetitive choice. 

It is also the very thing that happened in the garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve heard the voice of God in the garden after they had sinned and they hid (Gen 3:8). They had actually removed themselves from the jurisdiction of God and declared independence rebellion, which is the essence of sin. The consequence of this is fear and hiding, a clinging cycle, keeping them out of the grace and freedom that is there in the light, where earlier God was the one responsible for them. Sin is rebellion against God.  Our choices separate us into darkness and light. 

Nicodemus was revealed this. We do not read how he received it. But we do know that he continued to be a Pharisee. We do read that he fought to give Jesus a chance to be heard. We do know he lovingly laid the body of Jesus to rest, following his traditions, in the best way he could. One can only imagine that for Nicodemus that night in the garden, his faith came alive, and the whole of the law that night was suddenly placed in context. His profession and his being was envigoured with a new zeal. We know he returned to being a Pharisee, and one can only imagine that he returned a very different Pharisee. 

We see him later in two subsequent occasions, John 7:50 in which he tries to argue for Jesus to be heard and listened to. We see him also in John 19: 39 where he and Joseph Arimathea ensure a loving burial. He would have lived the truth of Jesus's words that night - " the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in Him will have eternal life."