Forgive Me Too

She wears her guilt for all to see

In tears of sorrow falling free

With scented hair she wipes His feet

Bestows her kisses soft and sweet

She owns her choices, doesn’t flinch

Excuses neither yard nor inch

Nothing hidden, nought concealed

Her sullied soul to Him revealed

He chooses not to reprimand

Compassion stirs to stay His hand

Instead forgives and sets her free

His words disturb the deep in me

Beneath a mask my guilt resides

Dressed in righteous deeds it hides

Those secret sins that weary me

I yearn, like her, to be set free

He looks and sees my naked soul

I grasp this chance to be made whole

Transparent, rid of all disguise

Forgive me too, my spirit cries

All That He Can See

“The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him.”  John 8:29

I read these words in my quiet time yesterday morning.  I liked the “with me” bit and the “not left me alone” bit.  There are times when I feel a little bit abandoned and left alone.  It was encouraging to know it was written there in the Bible that God was with me and I wouldn’t be left alone.  But then the last phrase was waiting there to throw the spanner into the works – “for I always do what pleases him.”  Jesus might be able to confidently say those words, but I never can.  It would be nice is the word “try” was somewhere in the sentence, but it isn’t.  The truth of the matter is that I don’t always do what pleases him.  Sometimes I don’t even try.  Does that mean that God steps away and leaves me to my own devices if I don’t please Him?

The Holy Spirit, even before I finished the thought in my head, rushed in to answer the question with a very firm “No!”

The thing is, when God looks at me, He doesn’t see me but He sees Christ.  My life, when I asked Jesus to be my Saviour, became hidden in Christ.  If there was a courtroom, and I was standing in the dock, and there was a prosecutor laying out all the evidence before God, and all that evidence was true, and I had no hope of acquittal – Christ would stand between me and the judge, God.  What God would see would be Jesus and all of His righteousness.  He wouldn’t see me at all. I am hidden. 

When Jesus said, “I always do what pleases him,” because I am hidden in Jesus, I am saying it too not because I always do what pleases God, but because Jesus does. 

I am still on the pathway of doing things to please God.  I am still responsible to work with God to be transformed.  But that list of evidence has been tossed out.  God doesn’t keep it in a back pocket and wave it at me every so often to drive me into righteous behaviour.  Jesus tells me to stay hidden in Him and He will do the things that please God through me.

All That He Can See

I don’t know how he does it but

He stands before God’s throne

Parading all my failures and

The chances that I’ve blown

He questions my commitment

And says that I fall short

For one who is redeemed I rarely

Act the way I ought

How quick to show my anger

How swift to chide and scold

How slow to show forgiveness

How oft’ must I be told?

The Father’s gaze is on me

The words ring in His ears

There are no words to offer

Ashamed I shed my tears

But then the Son steps forward

He stands to take my place

The Father looks not on me

But on His Son’s dear face

God knows my faults so clearly

But when He looks at me

The righteousness of Jesus

Is all that He can see

Down There...Somewhere

I stand at the edge of the cliff
Looking down
Dizzy

I think I just pushed our friendship over

Just because I didn’t hear
It shatter and break
On the way down
Doesn’t mean it didn’t fall
Just because I cannot see
Fragments or
Clouds of dust
Doesn’t mean it’s not
Down there
Somewhere

I am left desolate
I can’t imagine a day
A moment
A single breath
Without you
The knowledge that
I failed to cherish
Something precious
Leaves me devastated

Saying sorry is inadequate
But I say it anyway
And more

Tell me, I plead
That there is something to salvage

Forgive me, I cry

Your word promises that
What’s broken
Can be restored

I beleive Your promise




(Inspired by Psalm 51)

Mr Angry

Amos 4:6 – 11 makes for really heavy reading.

“ I gave you empty stomachs in every city and lack of bread in every town…I also withheld rain from you when the harvest was still three months away….Many times I struck your gardens and vineyards, I struck them with blight and mildew…I sent plagues among you as I did to Egypt. I killed your young men with the sword… "I overthrew some of you as I overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah…yet you have not returned to me," declares the LORD.

This is not a case of bad things happening randomly and God making use of the circumstances to bring about someone’s good. This is not about Satan doing the bad stuff to people and God using it to bring about his purposes. This is not about other people doing bad stuff and God getting the blame. God took responsibility for each of the disasters that overtook the nation. They were to be left in no doubt that none of it was random, none of it was caused by Satan, none of it was caused by other people…it was all caused by God! This is not even God allowing the bad stuff to happen. There is nothing passive about any of the verbs here.

I am having difficulty with this God! This is an angry God.

I was talking with a group of young people the other day about whether parents should be allowed to smack their children. Being as most of them were still of smackable age, almost to a child they disagreed. One lone hand up insisted that sometimes it was the only way to get the message across, and sometimes it came as a last resort when all other attempts at correction had failed. Another voice argued about what happens when the message of the smack doesn’t get heeded. Do you just smack harder? And then harder still? And then what comes next?

I am not sure that I have ever felt God’s smack, or if I have been smacked, whether I recognised it as a smack.

Do you just wipe out these paragraphs of scripture and say that God doesn’t do that any more? If he doesn’t do it any more, why did he do it then? If he doesn’t do it any more, why not?

I know that Jesus has entered the scene. With Jesus comes complete and total forgiveness. We are made right with God in a way that was not possible for people in the time of Amos. We have the ability to please God in a way that the people at the time of Amos didn’t have. I stand in Christ. Christ pleases God, and I in Christ please God.

Does that mean that there isn’t an angry God any longer? I don’t think so. I am just not sure what I do think about it all.