Tag Archives: Christian

Endeavor

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I love the way
You keep trying
To take the beautiful,
And make it more beautiful.

Is there no city on a hill,
No mountain grandeur,
Nor sweeping vista,
That can truly satisfy,
In its worldly reality?
Having travelled all byways,
Having scaled the heights,
Plumbed the depths
As far as you dare,
Seek still you will.
You want yet more.
You always will.

Memory does not suffice,
Camera and canvas fail.
Pixels and pigments,
Even when teased to their ends,
Falter and fall short
Of the image
Engraved on your heart.

It is as though,
At some level,
You intuit.
You fear.
You suspect.
No, you truly know.

There will always be,
One more quest,
Another dream,
Perfecting,
The not yet perfect.

You glimpse the Creator in creating.
With moon and stars,
With waterfall and rainbow,
With the wilderness and the wild,
You point.

For the sum of all,
Sunrises and sunsets,
Venues and vistas,
Still will not equal,
Just simply point.

You rise to the challenge,
Build to the crescendo,
And then must wait,
Wait till the Perfect comes.

At last,
At long, long last,
To know
The One to whom creation points
To know at last
The One True,
All Beautiful,
God.

© 2016 Joann Nelander

Under the Fig Tree

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“I Saw You Under the Fig Tree.”

All our yesterdays are forgotten
With the rush of Tomorrow.
All the words fade away.
Images are fleeting.
All praise passes into oblivion.
The compliments lost,
As unrecorded history.

All things are sand
Falling through the fingers of the Future.
None endure the winds of Time.

So, what of me?
What is the why of me?
Why do You long for me?
I feel your desire pleading
In all about me.

“I saw you under the fig tree.”
What did you see of me, O Lord?
Did you see my yearning?
Were You witness to my sin?
Did you hear the prayer I whispered,
The call of my heart.

Did you see resolve written on my face?
Did you see the love
Swelling my heart?
What did you see of me, Oh Lord,
Under the fig tree?

Because You saw me
Under the fig tree,
My heart opens to see You.
You reveal a world and love
Beyond all that is matter,
Beyond all that once mattered,
Surpassing all that is,
A world of God ,
A world of God in all,
And for all,
Dying to live in all.

I didn’t see You,
Until now,
This precious Now,
Surviving my mortality,
With the reason of my being,
With the holy vision of Thou.

© 2016 Joann Nelander

The Robe

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Lord of the centuries,
Knit, of our pain, the knots,
That mysteriously arrange themselves
Across our days.

Guide, by unseen fingers,
Each little pearl,
To form a cloth
Alive with Your Golden threads,
Infinitely more than happenstance or tragedy.

Each strand of Time a mystery,
Bathed in trial and tears,
Yet rich in Awe,
Resplendent in Beauty,
And the gracious beneficence
Of sacrificial love.

Whole cloth,
Woven into a seamless robe,
You don in majesty,
Humble and meek in triumph o’er our graves,
As Life welcomes to the Banquet,
Our souls, now clad in bodies,
One with Your Own.

© 2015 Joann Nelander

The Church Militant

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The Church Militant

“Behold the Lamb of God,
Behold Him Who takes away
The sins of the world.”

A priest holds aloft,
The consecrated Host.
“Behold…”

One by one.
Standing in adoration,
Each receives.

They pass before me.
I hear, “Behold, My army,
Each, a living monstrance.”

©2016 Joann Nelander

Smiling Eyes

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Lying in the sunshine of Your love,
Recounting humming bird days,
Flitting as flashes flung to the heavens,
I look to the horizon,
For the rising of yet another sun.

I feel I know You.
It is me I doubt,
But I don’t know why.
I have spent my life
Becoming what I think
You want me to be.
Others, though, have always
Seemed to do it better.

Here I am at eve tide,
Recounting the many waters,
That wash these shores.
Your Beauty plays for me,
Painting the setting sun;
I guess, to reassure my clay
Of The Love You are,
As I still look for me,
Reflected in Your smiling eyes.

copyright 2014 Joann Nelander

Father Forever

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“Father forgive them they know not what they do.”

Cords of sorrow draw me.
I am witness to the plight,
Man become beast,
Without wisdom or wit,
Licking his own blood,
Hungry, harrowed,
Stunned in horror.

The knots of revenge entangle,
Cry for evermore blood,
Ever more abasement,
Ever more widows,
Ever more orphans,
Ever more refuse and waste.

A crying child becomes hundreds,
Then thousands,
Then millions,
Left to wander,
Left to dissipate and hate.

Vengeance is sweeter than food,
To one who chooses to live
Without Love,
Without Light,
Without the Holy and the True,
For such is the abode of Sin,
And many the roads
Leading to its gate.

Bestial brutality,
Raging insanity,
Now reigns the malignant.
The disconsolate refuse all solace,
Wounds of the heart,
Wounds of the mind,
Wounds of the body of Man.

Look to the high mountain,
Eyes to the heavens,
Wake the long dead,
Who await the promised Banquet,
Those, who now know,
They are one Family of Man,
Divested of tribal allegiance,
Awaiting the One,
And coming, King.

Offer a sacrifice of prayer.
Pour forth the balm of Gilead.
Speak, in the tongue of angels,
The comfort of peoples,
Hope in the Darkness.

Humanity’s ties are stronger than its sins,
More numerous than the cords
That draw it down in the Dark Night.
For its One God
Is Father Forever.