It’s no surprise that I love a good poem. Words have power. We Christians, of all people, should understand this. Strung together, words are not like a pane of glass that simply reveals things as they are in naked fact. A great sentence, or poem, or even novel, is much more like a painting. Words draw out to the surface aspects of reality that demand contemplation and response. George MacDonald, the writer C.S. Lewis called “his master”, went so far as to say that God created the world with certain metaphors in mind. To MacDonald, to compare the righteousness of God to the mountains is not an act of creative license. God made the mountains as He did so that we could have an alphabet by which to interpret the truth of divine righteousness. For MacDonald, the world was pregnant with the glory of God. To see a rock rightly was not to see a mere chunk of stone. A true vision of granite is a better vision of God. If God is the Rock of Ages, how could we not see through the stone into a deeper layer of reality?
I’m not sure that I would take things quite as far as MacDonald; nonetheless, I love the spirit of his thinking. Christians need more than a sanctified will and a sanctified intellect. They also need a sanctified imagination. Just as Lewis needed his own imagination to be baptised by MacDonald, we, too, need to find writers who can purify our minds until we appreciate the beauty of truth and the truth of beauty.
This week I want to share another poem with the church family. This one makes me think of the story in Luke 5 when Jesus tells Peter to move his boat out into the deeper waters. Many a preacher has used this text to challenge Christians to step further into the space of trust and obedience. The poem below captures the same idea. Although it is a good thing to live a peaceful and quiet life (c.f. I Tim. 2:2), in a materialistic, comfort-driven society like ours, its important that we don’t limit our ambitions to peace and quietness. Paul is case in point. It’s hard to find a more venturesome soul than the great apostle to the gentiles. And I think we can learn something from his example. Once and a while it’s worth taking a moment before God to ask if we are playing life too safe. It’s just possible that we’ve been trolling in the surf when, for a while now, a still, small voice has been whispering, “Put out into the deep” (Luke 5:4).
The great benefit of heeding this voice is not the possibility of having adventures and breaking routines. Something far better is at stake. I like how the old hymn “Trust and Obey” makes the point. The hymn says, “But we never can know/the delights of his love/until all on the altar we lay.” Therein lies the chief boon of total submission. To go out into deep waters is to go fishing with Jesus himself. And who could ask for more?
Here is the poem:
Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.
Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.
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