Guest Post: Responding to Jesus’ Name

((This weekend we welcome Phil Bartelt once again to Faith Church.  Here’s some thoughts that Phil shared to help prepare for worship tomorrow.))

Philippians 2:9-11 tells us there is an appropriate response to Jesus’ name. Here is a poem that may help us as we prepare to explore our response.

Let not my humble presence affront and stumble

your hardened hearts that have not known my ways

nor seen my tracks converge to this uniqueness.

Mine is the strength of the hills that endure and crumble,

bleeding slow fertile dust to the valley floor.

I am the fire in the leaf that crisps and falls

and rots into the roots of the rioting trees.

I am the mystery, rising, surfacing

out of the seas into these infant eyes

that offer openness only and the unfocusing

search for an answering gaze. O recognize,

I am the undefeated heart of weakness.

Kneel and adore, fall down to pour your praise:

you cannot lie so low as I have been always.


(J.V. Taylor, “Christmas Venite,” A Christmas Sequence and Other Poems, p.15.)


Published by joelkime


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