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In the shadows softly waiting
when the sun is at its height,
to emerge when all the comfort
of the day gives way to night,
always patient, Jesus watches,
when we need no light to guide,
when we think our strength sufficient
and we need no help besides.
Yet with love and understanding,
when our independence fades,
when our path is plunged in darkness
by the unexpected shade,
through the shadows he approaches,
sympathetic to our plight,
when our darkly-felt foreboding
would exclude each ray of light.
See him there within the shadows;
do you think he doesn’t care
for your troubles and your heartache
so impossible to bear?
Can you now perhaps remember
how he suffered on a Cross
how it looked as if for him at last
his life was wasted, lost?
Yet such darkness was essential
to God’s full salvation plan
for by that the Lord extinguished
all the judgement due to man.
See him later, resurrected,
breaking through the darkest hour;
see him, hopelessness replacing
with his life-transforming power.
It is sometimes through the shadows
of an inconvenient night
that we come at last to Jesus
who alone can give us light.
Don’t delay to go and meet him;
he knows how your sorrows feel.
Every injury and heartache
he has perfect power to heal.
John Puckett
Faded now the stains,
the weathered grain
soft-shaded
where the doorpost
and the lintel
hold a remnant hint of crimson,
faint in the corner,
where the stonework steals the sun.
A people lived here once
till death,
chill death,
one awesome night
swept through the land,
none spared from house of slave or king
save those
whose doorposts red with blood were spread.
Soft morning light
swelled wide the wailing dirge
through Pharaoh’s land,
yet blood-marked dwellings
voiceless stood,
their captive host
triumphant fled the night,
till vacant stood these walls,
this doorway
mellowed
by forgetful time.
The searching heart
some clouded trace yet finds,
some lingered truth
the listening ear detects,
some thought remembered
in the captive mind,
whose hope survives the hungry years
of dull-fixed form and drifted word,
so faint
the remnant words
of Gospel round the chapel door.
Dare no one blaze them rich in blood once more?
John Puckett – written many years ago.
“When He sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door and not allow the destroyer to come into your houses to strike you.” Exodus 12: 23 NKJV.
The Egyptian climate is well suited to the preservation of ancient structures. For how many years did traces of the Israelites’ Exodus remain discernible on their former homes?
Several years ago we knew an old chapel over whose door, engraved in stone, were the words, “Ye Must Be Born Again.” Sadly, the powerful preaching of salvation through the Blood of Jesus was no longer heard from its pulpit.
This poem makes an imaginary connection spanning 3,500 years.
Explanation
God worked mightily in Wales on many occasions over a period of more than 200 years. A few years ago, Veronica and I had the privilege of living on the West Wales coast towards the southern end of the curving coastline of Cardigan Bay. Our house was high above the sea and faced east, so we had spectacular views of the sunrise for much of the year. When clear polar air flowed in from the northwest, much of the coastline was visible, even to Mount Snowdon and the Lleyn Peninsula in North Wales, nearly 70 miles across the Bay.
That clarity and the breathtaking views were our delight early on a Sunday morning one summer.
Later that day we were in a church meeting that made us very sad, because the achievements and successes of men far outweighed the glory given to God. That is putting it mildly.
After a restless night, I woke at 4.30 a.m. and watched the dawn sky brightening. It was solemnly different from the previous morning.
The Welsh names in the poem refer to points and places around that wide northward sweep of Cardigan Bay as seen from our Welsh home.
Clear air, calm sea,
no creeping mist, no coastal fog,
conceal the scene from Parcyffynon top,
the panorama talks,
Pencribach round to Lleyn.
Contented lies the sea
majestic blue,
the headland hiding Newquay
broods its memories a century ago.
Its youngsters sang and prayed the Gospel light
throughout the darkened land.
Beyond lies Aberystwyth,
buildings crouching pale
near thirty miles away beneath the hills.
Two centuries have passed since loud she rang
the songs of Zion’s joy in every street.
Twice distant,
Snowdon lifts its solemn shoulders high,
custodian of a countless host
who toiled and prayed
and sang their way to glory
from the quarry and the mine.
So many scenes of godly life and ministry
lie buried in those hills behind the quiet shores.
Concludes the circuit west,
as peaks of Lleyn rise heavenward from the sea,
distinguished witnesses of God’s past work in Wales –
salvation songs resounding round the Bay.
But that was yesterday.
The atmosphere has changed.
That clarity of air and sky and sea is gone.
The unseen sun beneath the hazy mountains and the sea
unveils today.
No smooth emergence of a native dawn,
to spread its glory slow but sure
through red to brilliant white-light gold beneath the blue.
Today
the sky is lurid orange-red,
disfigured, slashed and stained,
imprinted with man’s greed and pleasure-lust,
persistent plastered trails of aircraft scorch the sky in godless glare,
the ancient hills obscured that once with Jesus’ glory rang.
Today
in eagerness to reproduce the holy work of ages past,
incautious men have slashed and stained God’s glory
with a stardom of their own.
Their imitations pose as truth,
their smart distortions circumvent
the vital seeds of God’s reviving work.
It seems that hindering sins no longer needs extinction
by the power of Jesus’ blood.
Their so-called ministry pretends to hold the key to blessing
in its grubby hands of gimmick, jest, and self-proclaiming oratory,
and worst of all this travesty of truth
is hailed as revelation, prophecy, and power!
Time-honoured prophets weep again the sad and solemn fact –
“My people love to have it so!”
Have mercy, Lord!
Send once again that Spirit clean and pure,
that holy air of heaven
to sweep away the smears of man
that cloud your truth with earthly pride.
Make clear again
the hallowed heights
of Zion’s hill in Wales!
John Puckett – written a few years ago.
Mocked him,
cursed him,
spat upon him,
poured their utmost scorn upon him,
nailed him,
pierced him,
wrong accused him,
uncontent till they had killed him –
dead!
Taught them.
loved them,
understood them,
came from heaven to regain them,
saw them,
heard them,
free forgave them,
life-blood from his heart to save them –
bled!
John Puckett
If Jesus came to your house, to spend a day or two,
if he came unexpectedly, I wonder what you’d do?
Oh, I know you’d give your nicest room to such an honoured guest,
and all the food you’d serve to him would be the very best;
and you would keep assuring him you’re glad to have him there,
that having him in your own home is joy beyond compare.
But – when you saw him coming, would you meet him at the door,
with arms outstretched in welcome to your Heavenly Visitor,
or would you have to change your clothes before you let him in,
or hide some magazines and put the Bible where they’d been?
Would you turn off the radio and hope he hadn’t heard,
and wish you hadn’t uttered that last, loud, hasty word?
Would you hide your worldly music, and put some hymnbooks out?
Could you let Jesus walk right in, or would you rush about?
And I wonder – if the Saviour spent a day or two with you,
would you go right on doing the things you always do?
Would you keep right on saying the things you always say?
Would life for you continue as it does from day to day?
Would your family conversation keep up its usual pace,
and would you find it hard each meal to say a table grace?
Would you sing the songs you always sing, and read the books you read,
and let him know the things on which your mind and spirit feed?
Would you take Jesus with you everywhere you’d planned to go,
or would you maybe change your plans for just a day or so?
Would you be glad to have him stay forever on and on,
or would you sigh with great relief when he at last was gone?
It might be interesting to know the things that you would do,
if Jesus Christ in person came to spend some time with you.
Author uncertain. Some websites attribute it to Lois Blanchard Eades, but others to Author Unknown.
Obviously it was written before television and all the other technology swept into our homes, but its main thrust is still very heart-searching.
This poem was a significant factor in my clearly understanding the Gospel for the first time –
The Early Years, Part Two
The poem also has relevance to the article on our Home Page –
Blame the Church?
Sad, solemn, slow, with dusty step,
familiar, homeward way they tread.
Each passing face, each passing scene,
this day of sadness nothing mean.
In grief, perplexity, and pain,
their peaceless hearts recoil again
from crucifixion, death-filled tomb –
what light can penetrate such gloom?
In conversation deep confined,
each to the other’s thought reminds
of every detail, deed, and word,
three tragic days of death conferred.
Their questions deep – how could it be
that Christ should die, defencelessly?
Was he not Son of God with power?
Where then such might in Pilate’s hour?
No hope, no future for these two
disciples from Emmaus who
once heard that voice and saw that One
whose earthly work seemed all undone.
A faster footfall on the way
disturbs the dust in evening’s ray.
One overtakes, then joins in step –
their eyes from recognition kept.
The stranger first he questions why………
To read the whole of this narrative poem, go to
The Easter Stranger in full
A few weeks before Easter 1993, two 10-year-old boys abducted 2-year-old James Bulger from a Liverpool shopping centre, battered him to death and left his body on a railway line.
Sixteen years later Britain was shocked again.
Near Doncaster in Yorkshire, just before Easter 2009, two boys aged 10 and 11 brutally tortured two other boys aged 9 and 11 for an hour and a half. Both victims needed serious hospital treatment. Their tormentors have recently been tried and sentenced.
This poem was written after the murder of little James Bulger.
What matter today
if a cross stood high on a hill
two thousand years ago?
What matter today
if there
a Man hung dying
in company with criminals?
To most,
long years have faded fact to history books
to lie like fragile threads in ancient tapestries,
a mingled pattern of some fertile tale
construed to build a church
on gullibility.
Self-freed,
our media age needs no such creed,
no faith, no God to reckon with,
no concept of beyond to analyse and capture
on its video and film.
Instead, our media power
projects its flood of violence on our fragile land,
disfiguring,
slow-motioning to death its people
in the focus of a godless dream.
And a vacant cross
still stands,
calling a lost child’s nation
back to life.
John Puckett
The only hope for our media-driven society is a return to the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Agnus Dei
they sang
echoes of an ancient cry
of prophet wild
on Jordan’s bank
mystery spanned eternity
infinity the source and end
provision planned
in love
to man
for God
a remedy to cross the gulf
sin’s chasm
gaping wound
unhealed
till that great Baptist cry
‘Behold the Lamb!’
declared fulfilment
imminent
on Calvary
John Puckett
After hearing Gounod’s lovely choral work “Agnus Dei” on the radio, the next day, these few lines came to me.
The truth embodied in those four words, ‘The Lamb of God,’ is so vast, no human effort or composition can do more than merely begin to explore its fulness.
Our response to John the Baptist’s proclamation should be our purest worship.
John chapter 1 gives the full context.
Do you know the love of Jesus
and the comfort of his care,
and the sweetness of his presence,
just to know that He is there?
Troubles try, and sadness sickens,
worries multiply and vex,
but remember Jesus promised
‘I will never you forsake.’
Mountains great may be still greater,
problems ever complicate,
but be sure, if you love Jesus,
you are never left to fate.
When He died for helpless sinners,
all sin’s consequences bore,
He became our perfect refuge,
peace and rest for evermore.
Pain-free life He never promised,
never said you’d live at ease,
but his love and care make troubles
stepping-stones to find his peace.
Why not trust this loving Jesus,
give yourself to his true care,
all your worries give him fully,
all your troubles let him bear?
He is able, He is able,
He is mighty, He is true,
He is loving, kind and gentle –
He has given himself for you.
John Puckett
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