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- Apart from Him
- To Be Gracious
- But by the Grace
- Fingerprints and Snowflakes
- Every Name that is Named
- An Unwatched-Pot
- Offer Declined
- No Dirges on the Other Side
- The Shadow of Life
- Timeless
- Cling
- Because it is a Gift
- Just Swell
-
This title comes from John 15:5 "without Me, you can do nothing".
Apart from Him
Which came first?
We chose to believe, but God
first chose us and called us and drew us to Him.
We love Him, yes,
but He loved us first.
We work out our own salvation,
but it is really God working in us.
We persevere to the end,
and yet, it is by God's power that we do not fall.
Where is boasting, then?
It is excluded.
All that we have, we have received from His hand.
Apart from Christ, we can do nothing.
By His power and strength, we can do all things.
So draw near.
We cannot be too close to God.
lori fiechter
8-16-04
John 6:44 No man can come to me,
except the Father which hath sent me draw him:
and I will raise him up at the last day.
1 John 4:19 We love
him, because he first loved us.
Romans
3:27 Where [is] boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by
the law of faith.
1
Corinthians 4:7 For
who maketh thee to differ [from another]? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive?
now if thou didst receive [it], why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received [it]?
Philippians
4:13 I can do
all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.
To Be Gracious
I pray for the grace
to be gracious
when I'd rather be
peevish, defensive, or rude--
grace to admit all my wrongs
and not insist on my rights.
But Lord, that is so hard to do!
And that's why I pray
for grace every day--
grace to others from me;
grace that I need from You.
lori fiechter
8-16-04
Paul's epistles are book-ended by greetings and farewells of
grace. So is the book of Revelation. Is it significant that the last verse of the Bible is
"The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen." ? Paul writes
so much about grace in the first part of Romans, but one of my favorite citings is in I
Corinthians 15. "But by the grace of God, I am what I am."
But by the Grace
(I Cor. 15:10)
You can bring up my past:
mistakes and sins and arrogance.
I can point to my present:
how I've changed,
how God has used me in His service,
And yet, I must admit,
it is only by the grace of God,
that I am what I am now.
Yes, I've labored--
but not by my own power
or might or ability;
it was the grace of God
which was with me,
the grace of God
working in me.
And so, it is not about me;
It is about God.
Pointing always,
pointing always
to Him.
lori fiechter
8-16-04
Fingerprints
and Snowflakes
No two alike--
and we are more than snowflakes.
God makes no clones, no replicas--
only individuals and originals,
In His own image,
all gloriously different.
He named His stars,
how much more His children!
We have been uniquely created,
not mass-produced.
We are the poems of the Great Poet,
the paintings of the Master Artist;
His symphonies--
each one beloved,
No two alike.
9-11-04
not by social-security number,
not by GPS location,
not by rank and station--
We are known by name.
Names are personal
imbued with feeling and meaning.
Numbers are dry, empirical, unpoetic.
Bank accounts have numbers;
children have names.
We are not numbers,
We are names.
lori fiechter
9-11-04
An Unwatched-Pot
always boils, often scorches.
It was too deep a pan
for such a shallow faith.
Faith, only half-cooked
and yet fully-burnt.
An unpleasant odor lingers.
Wash me again, Lord,
(yet once again)
and fill me with your
living water
that never boils dry.
7-6-04
At all costs, we must protect our
fragile pride. At all costs, justify ourselves rather than face confession. At
all costs, refuse His grace. What rare exceptions are the truly humble. How
humility kicks against our basic human nature!
Embraced by whom,
this gift of grace?
--Not by those who think,
"I have not really sinned"
--nor by those who dare not ask
because they've sinned too much.
--not by those who cover up with fig leaves
and pretend that all is well.
who do not "need" the gift;
No grace to those
who will not accept it.
No grace to those who feel,
"I have under-sinned"
No grace to those who fear,
"I have over-sinned".
And no grace to those
who have fixed the problem themselves.
But abundant grace to those
who confess without pretense or prefix,
"Lord, I have sinned."
(and only You can restore me.)
7-11-04
Mar
2:17 When Jesus heard [it], he saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of
the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but
sinners to repentance.
Rom 5:15 But not as
the offence, so also [is] the free gift. For if through the offence of one
many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace,
[which is] by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.
Rom 5:17 For if by one
man's offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace
and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus
Christ.)
Eph 2:8 For by grace
are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: [it is] the gift of
God:
No Dirges on the Other Side
The music here is softly sweet,
but he can't hear the sad refrains
for other music fills his ears,
a chorus with triumphant beat.
His angel escort leads him home
and songs of heaven usher him
beyond this earth,
beyond this sky
and past those gates of pearl.
No, the dirges here
are not for him;
the tears are ours and ours alone--
for separation aches,
as we try to tell our bleeding souls
that all indeed is well.
But he needs no such convincing;
for he has seen his Savior's face
and heard Him call his name.
Yet we must sing our dirges here,
or else our souls will break.
lori fiechter
9-11-04
The Shadow of Life
(Psalm 46, I Corinthians 15,I
Chronicles 29:15)
And this is life,
with hints of death
and whispers of mortality
that jump out abruptly like
macabre jack-in-the boxes.
We are startled
by the suddenness,
by the ill-timed visit
of foreboding shadows.
We don't really believe
that each day could be our last.
Insulated by the everyday,
we are frightened of the black cliff
from which no one
ever returns.
Well, no one else returns.
There is One who defied death's
one-way sentence.
He took the sting, our sting.
Therefore will not we fear
though death be dauntingly unpredictable
and waspishly unwelcome.
He has been there and back again;
He will lead us home.
Beyond the cold shadow,
Light reigns.
Beyond the smell of death and decay,
there is a river,
a clean, refreshing stream of Life.
Beyond this lonely campsite,
our real home awaits.
july 29, 2004
Timeless
2 Corinthians 4:18
Current? I'd rather be timeless.
Young? I'd rather be ageless,
untethered to Time,
belonging to the eternal.
My days are grass,
and mowing comes too soon.
But I have an anchor,
moored beyond Time,
I've cast my lot with Thee,
the Ageless, Timeless, Eternal Lord.
Mirrors do not show that anchor,
they reflect fading flowers
and withering grass.
--But there is another mirror.
lori fiechter
july 31, 2004
It seems that it is in our nature to
cling to something--anything! We don't like to feel completely adrift and tossed
about. But too often, we won't cling to God (and that "old rugged cross")
, as long as our imitation anchors hold.
Cling
I keep clinging to the outward
while the inner dissolves;
I'm just a shell that the spider sucked dry.
presentable without, and hollow within,
I cling to the semblance of life;
And when it all implodes,
I rebuild, as before--
my apple-thin skin
with no inner core.
But sometimes, I wonder,
when I come to my senses--
when I come to my senses
and see through these pretenses
Sometimes, I wonder,
"Is there anything more?"
august 14, 2004
Because it is a Gift
Why is grace given to the humble?
--because it is a gift,
not a bribe to obey
not wages or pay,
but an admittance of need,
a stooping for aid;
and Pride stands too high,
Pride can only rely
on himself--
He will pay his own way.
lori fiechter
august 12, 2004
The English language has its quirks.
"Swell" isn't used much as slang anymore (why does that word remind me of
Jimmy Stewart?) but it had a positive connotation in that usage. Otherwise, swelling is
usually negative--swelling in the body is a sign of something gone wrong, like an
infection or tumor. Swelling in the body of Christ is not a good thing, either.
And when knowledge leads to pride, the results are grotesque.
Just Swell
( I Corinthians 8:1,2)
Knowledge is wonderful;
We are admonished to
"be not ignorant".
There's nothing wrong with knowledge
that has been tempered and
buttressed by love.
But when knowledge increases without love,
the increase is not growth,
but swelling.
Swelling is not healthy;
it needs to be treated--
tumors excised, infections fought, malnourishment eliminated.
When we are puffed up by knowledge,
we think ourselves giants in Christ,
strong, benevolent giants, ready to instruct others.
We are not giants if we have knowledge without love;
We are sickly infants with
distended stomachs:
Over-fed on knowledge,
Under-nourished by love.
lori fiechter
August 27, 2004