Issue 29: “Humble Dazzle”
"Poetry is a nightingale that sits in the darkness and sings…"
-Percy Bysshe Shelley
Our mission at the Matthew 25 Initiative is to equip and sustain Anglicans serving alongside the vulnerable. The work of justice and mercy is often wondrous and also difficult. Holding beauty, naming pain, and contending for hope is what M25i does well. Walter Brueggeman writes, "A poem utters the unutterable and thinks the unthinkable." In places of brokenness, where much feels unutterable and unimaginable, we encounter Jesus. Continue with us in reflection and prayer through this series, "For the Soul," as poetry might offer us Spirit-soaked imaginations.
Before you begin...
While a poem about autumn might be predictable, we offer it with a twist. In short the message is: life matters and every life is worth seeing and treasuring. Each life is a “humble dazzle.”
Most of those who live on the margins of thriving feel humiliated and live with the constant burden of not being able to get on top of things. They have few, if no, people in their lives who tell them that they dazzle and are meant to dazzle.
As you read, enjoy the poem and then allow it to move you into listening for the Spirit.
Humble Dazzle
By Gregory Orr
Humble dazzle
Of autumn:
These leaves
On the ground –
Each one a page
In the Book,
A poem that says
I lived.
I was
A small part
Of the whole
Story – this
Is my song.
This is my glory.
Reflect
Reflect on your immeasurable worth to God as “the apple of his eye,” and speak it to your soul.
Reflect on those represented here in various areas of ministry, or think of someone you know personally. Pray their worth over them, acknowledging that their lives are treasured by God. Pray that someone would speak their immeasurable worth to them today and tomorrow.
Pray
We are each and all (both words are important) held in God’s love. Pause for 30 seconds to pray this before you step into the next tasks of your day.
Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.
I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord;
I have no good apart from you.”
As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones,
in whom is all my delight.
The sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply;
their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out
or take their names on my lips.
The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup;
you hold my lot.
The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.
I bless the Lord who gives me counsel;
in the night also my heart instructs me.
I have set the Lord always before me;
because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.
Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices;
my flesh also dwells secure.
For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol,
or let your holy one see corruption.
You make known to me the path of life;
in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
Psalm 16, ESV
