Reflection in Ongoing Time

I wish you all a happy end of 2012 and a blessed 2013!

Ten days ago the world was supposed to have ended. On the assumption that today is not the end of the world, either (though the Jews tell us that we get a ten days’ reprieve to mend our ways before the ultimate Day of the Lord), here is a reflection on how to evaluate the past…while time goes on.

On reading Church history

I.

This ragtag band of men, this feuding breed

that claims to be united by a name

but differs on its sound; that boasts a creed

but tones it down for wealth, or peace, or fame,

survived its persecutors’ deadly purge

one moment, then sought shelter in their power;

what blind and desperate survival urge

has brought them to, will bring them past this hour?

Lax discipline, grand dreams, unbending laws,

critics that judge and copycats that rob;

God! cannot history set wide its jaws

and swallow this exasperating mob?

Who can explain – for I am at a loss –

how these adore one Man upon one Cross?

II.

This remnant people that has crossed the firth

beyond our nature’s furthest borderland,

linked by the secret bond of second birth

to God’s paternal and creative hand,

yet moves to all delights of eyes and touch

and blinks in mortal weariness of soul.

All christenable oddities and much

absurd attachment go to shape the whole;

to God’s last sentence history’s deferred,

rejoiced in, judged, confessed, reweighed for glory

under the mercy of the final word

who will discern the plots of every story.

One God inspires our way in desert’s dust,

us, pastored, pastured in one common trust.