Bedtime Prayer: In Feast or in Fallow

Four years. Three cancers. My world feels shaken.

But Jesus, my certain hope, endures.

Certain hope.

I love those words!


Verse 1:
When the fields are dry, and the winter is long

Blessed are the meek, the hungry, the poor

When my soul is downcast, and my voice has no song

For mercy, for comfort, I wait on the Lord

Chorus:
In the harvest feast or the fallow ground,

My certain hope is in Jesus found

My lot, my cup, my portion sure

Whatever comes, we shall endure

Bedtime Prayer: Just As I Am

I wondered how to come to You,
I did not dare believe it true,
That You regard the orphaned ones:
Beloved daughters, worthy sons.

The broken and the barren, too,
I heard could find some rest in You.
What kind of love in injury’s place,
Would leave instead the stain of grace?

So I come in sorrow and I come in shame.
I come to the cross with my pain.

Just as I am, without one plea,
But that thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bidst me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

Bedtime Prayer: Jesus King of Angels

Jesus, King of angels, heaven’s light,
Shine Your face upon this house tonight.
Let no evil come into my dreams;
Light of heaven, keep me in Your peace.

Remind me how You made dark spirits flee,
And spoke Your power to the raging sea.
And spoke Your mercy to a sinful man;
Remind me, Jesus, this is what I am.

CHORUS:
The universe is vast beyond the stars,
But You are mindful when the sparrow falls,
And mindful of the anxious thoughts That find me,
surround me, and bind me . . . .

Ah, Holy Jesus

So undeserving. So thankful.

Ah, holy Jesus, how hast Thou offended,
That man to judge Thee hath in hate pretended?
By foes derided, by Thine own rejected,
O most afflicted.

Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon Thee?
Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone Thee.
’Twas I, Lord, Jesus, I it was denied Thee!
I crucified Thee.

Lo, the Good Shepherd for the sheep is offered;
The slave hath sinned, and the Son hath suffered;
For man’s atonement, while he nothing heedeth,
God intercedeth.

For me, kind Jesus, was Thy incarnation,
Thy mortal sorrow, and Thy life’s oblation;
Thy death of anguish and Thy bitter passion,
For my salvation.

One Unbroken Gaze

Desperation. Frenzy. Anxiety. Melancholy. Darkness.

These are words that describe me these past weeks since my surgery. Even in the joyous news that all my pathology came back clear, there is an unsettled gloom that hangs. I know a large part of it is just the path of recovering, and crazy medications, and new medications my body must adjust to, and old medications that have become unbalanced, and a body that has been hacked into and anesthetized once again.

But I also know a large part of it is because I am fixing my eyes here.