Prayer: Love to Jesus

Posted on by metroupe

I enjoy the book “Valley of Vision” which is a collection of prayers from Christians several centuries ago. The book is wonderful, but the language can be antiquated and challenging to read. I occasionally use this to stir up my sluggish heart. I have decided to paraphrase some of them into more modern language for our use and thought I would share them with you.

“Love To Jesus”

Adapted from Valley of Vision

Lord Jesus,

If I love you, then my soul will seek you,
But can I seek you unless my love to you is kept alive for this purpose?

Do I really love you because you are good, and because you are the only one who can bring real good to me?

It would be right if you did not love me because I am vile and self centered; yet I do seek you and when I find you there is no wrath to consume me, only your sweet love.

You are like a huge rock that stands between the burning sun and my soul, and I live in the cool shade as your chosen one.

Whenever my mind works apart from you, it yields only deceit and delusions; and when my deep desires work apart from you the only result is lifeless actions.

O how much I need you to live within me, because I don’t naturally have eyes to see you; yet I live by faith in you, the one whose face shines brighter to me than a thousand suns.

Christ, when I see that all my life is full of sin and shame, then show me that you are full of all goodness and glory.

Keep me from believing the error that you only appear in glory to my soul when I experience a heart full of strange feelings, as if that was the activity of your grace and glory.

But let me see that you reveal your self most clearly during the eclipse of my personal pride and conceit, when the good and pleasurable things of this world fade away.

It is then that the Son truly breaks out in glory and shows that he is the one who outshines everything in creation; then he makes men spiritually poor and helps them find true riches in himself. Help me to be suspicious of myself, and to find everything good in you!

Poem on Heaven and Humility

Posted on by metroupe

I found this poem, a clever way to articulate the mystery…..

I dreamt death came the other night
And heaven’s gate swung wide.
With kindly grace an angel came
And ushered me inside:
And there to my astonishment
Stood folk I’d known on earth,
Some I had judged as quite unfit
Or but of little worth:
Indignant words rose to my lips
But never were set free,
For every face showed stunned surprise
 —NO ONE EXPECTED ME!

Len Dean

No Wimps: the Law of the Yukon

Posted on by metroupe

Robert Service was a Scottish man with grit. He also had a flair for verse. He is known as the Canadian Kipling. This is the first paragraph of his famous poem the Law of the Yukon. He lived in the icy region, and the danger and adventure provided grist for his poems. This one is about sending your best men. I can’t help but see a call to view the good fight of missions as an appropriate parallel.

The Law of the Yukon
This is the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain:
“Send not your foolish and feeble;
send me your strong and your sane —
Strong for the red rage of battle; sane for I harry them sore;
Send me men girt for the combat, men who are grit to the core;
Swift as the panther in triumph, fierce as the bear in defeat,
Sired of a bulldog parent, steeled in the furnace heat.
Send me the best of your breeding, lend me your chosen ones;
Them will I take to my bosom, them will I call my sons;
Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with my meat;
But the others — the misfits, the failures — I trample under my feet.
Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain,
Ye would send me the spawn of your gutters — Go! take back your spawn again.

A Poison Tree: Bitterness

Posted on by metroupe


This is a great poem, I always enjoy it…

A Poison Tree

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine.
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

William Blake

Interesting Poem on Science and the Beauty of Nature

Posted on by metroupe

Dr. Sigmund Freud Discovers the Sea Shell

Science, that simple saint, cannot be bothered
Figuring what anything is for:
Enough for her devotions that things are
And can be contemplated soon as gathered.

She knows how every living thing was fathered,
She calculates the climate of each star,
She counts the fish at sea, but cannot care
Why any one of them exists, fish, fire or feathered.

Why should she? Her religion is to tell
By rote her rosary of perfect answers.
Metaphysics she can leave to man:
She never wakes at night in heaven or hell

Staring at darkness. In her holy cell
There is no darkness ever: the pure candle
Burns, the beads drop briskly from her hand.

Who dares to offer Her the curled sea shell!
She will not touch it!–knows the world she sees
Is all the world there is! Her faith is perfect!

And still he offers the sea shell . . .

What surf
Of what far sea upon what unknown ground
Troubles forever with that asking sound?
What surge is this whose question never ceases?

Archibald MacLeish

When a Poem is a Symptom of Illness

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This is a poem I wrote last year, while taking an anatomy class. It is probably nothing to be proud of, but it makes me chuckle. It also makes it hard to deny that I sometimes suffer from mental derangement:

Ode to Capillaries

Capillaries deserve great respect,
Great wisdom in design they reflect
Arterioles and venules they connect
The blood comes here after it’s trekked,
To vessels so small we cannot inspect,
Nutrients and oxygen they like to eject,
And gather the waste that tends to collect
And wash out the stuff that tries to infect,
My fav-o-rite vessel if I had to select.

Matt Troupe
5/07

Great Poem about Manhood by Kipling

Posted on by metroupe

Rudyard Kipling

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch; If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run – Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And – which is more – you’ll be a Man my son!

America’s First Woman Poet on a House Fire

Posted on by metroupe

This is a wonderful poem by an American Puritan Woman. Her house burned down, and she poured out her heart in this poem. It is beautiful and full of deep feeling, but I think I like most of all that she is able to realize that her life does not consist in the things found here on earth. That her real life is hidden with Christ in God. In light of the recent wildfires, this is applicable.

by Anne Bradstreet
(1612-1672)

Upon the Burning of Our House – July 10th, 1666

In silent night when rest I took,
For sorrow neer I did not look,
I waken’d was with thundring nois
And Piteous shreiks of dreadfull voice.
That fearfull sound of fire and fire,
Let no man know is my Desire.
I, starting up, the light did spye,
And to my God my heart did cry
To strengthen me in my Distresse
And not to leave me succourlesse.
Then coming out beheld a space,
The flame consume my dwelling place.

And, when I could no longer look,
I blest his Name that gave and took,
That layd my goods now in the dust:
Yea so it was, and so ’twas just.
It was his own: it was not mine;
Far be it that I should repine.

He might of All justly bereft,
But yet sufficient for us left.
When by the Ruines oft I past,
My sorrowing eyes aside did cast,
And here and there the places spye
Where oft I sate, and long did lye.

Here stood that Trunk, and there that chest;
There lay that store I counted best:
My pleasant things in ashes lye,
And them behold no more shall I.
Under thy roof no guest shall sitt,
Nor at thy Table eat a bitt.

No pleasant tale shall ‘ere be told,
Nor things recounted done of old.
No Candle ‘ere shall shine in Thee,
Nor bridegroom’s voice ere heard shall bee.
In silence ever shalt thou lye;
Adieu, Adeiu; All’s vanity.

Then streight I gin my heart to chide,
And didst thy wealth on earth abide?
Didst fix thy hope on mouldring dust,
The arm of flesh didst make thy trust?
Raise up thy thoughts above the skye
That dunghill mists away may flie.

Thou hast an house on high erect
Fram’d by that mighty Architect,
With glory richly furnished,
Stands permanent tho’ this bee fled.
It’s purchased, and paid for too
By him who hath enough to doe.

A Prise so vast as is unknown,
Yet, by his Gift, is made thine own.
Ther’s wealth enough, I need no more;
Farewell my Pelf, farewell my Store.
The world no longer let me Love,
My hope and Treasure lyes Above.