Poems & Prayers

By Rev Roger Scholtz

This new year is into full swing. People are back at work, children are back at school, alarm clocks have been set back to some unearthly time of the morning. And for many people the lazy, leisurely days of the holiday season are fast fading into a distant memory.
If you’re anything like me, you may already be feeling the overwhelming need to ‘come up for air’ and catch your breath in the midst of the hectic pace of the new year. Hopefully, these devotions this week will provide a brief moment for you to do just that each day.
The format of the Barking Dog-Collar this week will be a little different. Instead of a whole lot of words, theological commentary and faith-talk – valuable as that is – this week we will simply be allowing a few poems and prayers to speak to us.
They are all poems and prayers that explore, in one way or another, the themes of God’s promise and purpose for our lives. You are encouraged not to rush through them, but to slow down, breathe and enjoy!
NEW DAY by Donald Schmidt

O God,
you who promise to make all things new:
does that include me?
Will you make me new?

Cleanse me from top to toe,
renew my heart
revise my mind
revive my worth.
For I am poured out,
emptied,
ready to be filled:

but with what?


Fill me
with your gracious self,
O God.

Be you….in me.

GOD IN YOU by Meister Eckhart (14th century mystic)
A pear grows into a pear tree,
and a hazelnut grows into a hazelnut tree,
and a seed of God grows into God.
God does not ask anything else of you
but to let yourself go
and let God be God in you.