The Soil

You are beneath my feet oppressed forgot,

Ugly and dark your face when first laid bare,

No symmetry, no fair relief your lot.

Across the sea they call you “dirt”. That’s fair.

For in your deep untrodden paths and niches

Crawl,  ghastly, loathsome, beasts small and obscene.

Your are the midden of a thousand species,

The grave yard for the countless  hosts unseen

Then came the spring and from your  breast arose

A multitude of promises of food

Of beauty in each bursting seed that grows.

The soil, I find it is no longer rude.

Without the soil I learn we could not feed

We least esteem the source of all we need.

Peter M. Grinham 25th February 2015

 

The Sky

The mistress of a thousand cryptic faces,

I raise my grateful longing eyes to you.

Your depths contain a multitude of graces

Which daily give an ever changing view.

Sometimes grey clouds give battle bold on high

On other days a gloom obscures the blue

That still remains above the clouded sky

Each day reveals some truth that’s ever new.

But when the sun is low and in its fall

The back cloth sky turns blue to green to red

And black barred cloud brings loveliness to all,

I thank my God for what the sky has said

For in the torment of tumultuous days

Sad pain to fairer beauty points my gaze.

Peter M.Grinham 20^th February 2015

A Cloud of Witnesses , Ten Great Christian Thinkers by Alister McGrath IVP 1990.

 

There are at least three ways of approaching a body of knowledge; discover it yourself, read about it or read the biographies of those who did the finding. In Geography you can travel, read a text or the life of Humbodlt. In Chemistry text books abound,  or you may read the life of Sir Humphrey Davy, or ,subject to health and safety, you can experiment in your garden shed. We are all theologians for life is the laboratory of theology.  The book I am recommending represents the biographical approach to knowledge.  As I read this book I began to appreciate some old well known doctrines in a new and vital way. That which we take for granted was hammered out in the lives and thinking of these theologians.

I had read of the battle of Athanasius over the divinity of Christ. It is still being fought today. He summed it up in this reasoning" Only God can save, Jesus saves,  therefore Jesus is God. "  The grace of God has been precious to me for decades, but reading of Augustine's struggle brought it home to me with special vigour.  Reading about the controversial Karl Barth has made me appreciate the spiritual significance of Scripture and the awesome significance of preaching. Who would have guessed that my yearning for the other was given such significance by the eloquence of C.S. Lewis. There are others; Aquinas, Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and Jonathan Edwards. There are so many discoveries to make and old truths to rediscover.