Purple

Responding to Acts 16:9-15

Haiku of witness and welcome.

Paul has a vision:

a Macedonian man

calls, Come and help us.

We booked a passage

to Macedonia. God

wanted us to go!

We had to proclaim

the good news of God's new life.

So we went to them.

There, in Philippi

they went down to the river,

to the place of prayer.

On the Sabbath day,

They met the gathered women,

sharing God's good news.

Lydia, dealer

in purple cloth, heard Paul's words

listened eagerly.

Worshipper of God,

Lydia, asks: Baptise me!

She, and her household.

Lydia urged them:

If you judge me faithful, come,

and stay at my home.

© Ken Rookes 2025

Who will go for us?

Haiku for a calling.

A wondrous vision,

surprising, of God’s glory,

there, in the temple.

Isaiah sees God

high, upon God’s lofty throne,

seraphs attending.

Six wings per seraph,

two shielding face, two the feet,

and two giving flight.

The seraphs call; ‘Holy

to the Lord of hosts; the earth

fills with God’s glory!

The building shakes, filled

with incense smoke. Isaiah,

trembling, cries in fear.

Woe is me; I’m lost!

Sinfulness overwhelms me,

yet I have seen God!

A seraph flies down

with a coal from the altar,

touched it to his lips.

This has touched your lips

Your guilt is taken away,

your sin blotted out.

The Lord’s voice calls out:

Whom shall I send? He answers

Here am I; send me!

© Ken Rookes 2024

You are salt

 

The salt gives of itself,
accepting its modest part,
and knowing that its culinary duty
is not to dominate,
but to enhance.
Its freedom is generous,
it is there for the other;
profligate as it imparts its saltiness.

The master gathers his followers;
calls them salt,
at large upon earth.
The disciple pours out self recklessly,
to enhance the justice,
to build the peace;
knowing that hope is an elusive costly thing,
and that the apparently foolish vision
of a world seasoned and shaped by love,
was never imagined.

© Ken Rookes 2014

We live in a scary world

"We live in a scary world. No wonder people are drawn to apocalyptic visions! No wonder folks speculate about the world coming to an end. One of my favorite bumper stickers, those occasional theological sound bites that we read in traffic says, "God is coming and she is mad!"

God have every reason to be mad! We're making a colossal mess of things here! We choose to glorify in all the wrong stuff: war; humiliating our adversaries; shaming the immigrant; ignoring or neglecting our children and families; consuming goods that possess us rather than us possessing them; going through the motions of our religion rather than cultivating spiritual disciplines that help us listen carefully and prayerfully to God; and so much more. These are all choices we actively make, but we don't have to choose these things--a lesson also found in Revelation.

The second reason that the book of Revelation remains a profoundly powerful text despite being so bizarre is that it acknowledges the hardship and suffering of daily existence while it also invokes the deepest longings of the human heart for life in all its fullness, healed and whole."

http://day1.org/1941-the_grace_of_the_city_of_god