August 2-8

I have been away with some of our young people (who perhaps themselves are old souls in many ways) on a mission trip in Duluth; I had thought I might have time for a reflection earlier this week to make up for last week’s miss, but not so.  My apologies, and here are some thoughts on the devotions beginning August 2.

The poem for August 2 was especially convicting for me.  Is God, for me, the solution to a problem, to be ignored when the problem is not presenting itself?  Is God to be called on at need and ignored when not needed?  I fear that I often treat my relationship with God in this way.  This poem uses the metaphor of a plough, as Jesus does in Luke 9:62—“No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”  May God direct my eyes and my steps and my strength to continue forward!

The succeeding poems treat the Old Soul’s relationship with God: utter dependence and connectedness.  “For sap thy dead branch calls, O living vine!” (August 4; cf. John 15:4-5).  We receive this connectedness through trust in God—“Faith opens all the windows to God’s wind” (August 5), a beautiful image if ever there was one.  But this faith is, as we know, not from us, but again a gift from God.  The poem for August 6 is a reflection on God’s care for us.  “I can well afford / All to forget, so thou remember, Lord.”  We are frail and fallible.  God is strong and unfailing and faithful.

The poems for August 7 and 8 seem to be another change of subject; how God, rather than any of our beliefs about God or experiences of God, is our source of life and ground of faith.  The last two lines of the poem for August 8 are difficult for me, but I think I understand them.  (I found the other poems this week refreshingly direct after the tortured syntax we had to struggle through earlier this summer.)  The “holy maid” is of course Mary, sister of Martha (Luke 10:38-42).  Mary received something precious by sitting and listening to Jesus.  “Yet, brooding only on that treasure, she / Had soon been roused by conscious loss of heart.”  I take this to mean, roughly, “If Mary had then gone through life only brooding on the treasure she received when she listened to Jesus, she would soon have been rousted out of her faith and lost heart.”  If anyone else understands it differently, I would be glad to know your interpretation.  “Roused” is a word I would normally use in a positive sense in a faith context (roused to action, roused by the Spirit’s moving), but it seems to be negative here.

Again, we are reminded of our dependence on God, moment to moment, for continued faith and life.  This has been much on my mind as I prepare to preach on Sunday; my text is 1 John 2:18-28, which ends—“And now, little children, abide in him, so that when he is revealed we may have confidence and not be put to shame before him at his coming.”  This abiding will continue to occupy us as we reflect on the poems MacDonald wrote for this coming week.