Evening Prayer 
Let no thought come to my heart,
Let no ruffle come to my spirit,
that is hurtful to my poor body this night,
nor ill for my soul at the hour of my death–
but may You Yourself, O God of life,
be at my breast, be at my back,
You to me as a star, You to me a guide,
from my life’s beginning to my life’s closing.
A Celtic prayer (partial)
Shiny Hope
The car slumps across bumps in our Jakarta cab.
Sun soaks our shirts.
Cabbie shifts, falters, and brakes.
Traffic’s balky and I’m sulky.
Cabbie sighs, rubs a hand across his eyes,
and takes from the grubby visor
a picture of a brand-new sports car.
I watch his eyes brighten, then shine
at the hope right there in his hand.
I hope, you hope,
she hopes, we all hope…
We look to the match,
to the ticket, the test,
the test tube,
to the ring, the ring road,
the route, the Out.
Cabbie tucks the raffle ticket back in its place,
changes the gears and steps on the gas.
I so easily to hold to hope:
it’s a shiny thing in my desert.
It’s my fickle faith demands all grace.
– Charity Johnson 2013
…that all believers would be filled with love that comes from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and genuine faith. I Timothy 1:5, NLT
“Well, if you friends jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you!?” this common expression (or variations of this) is used by mothers and fathers on their children. Its broadest meaning is
: “Think for yourself—because even the best crowd can be dead wrong.” Parents and guardians continually walk that line of being the objective voice to a (naturally selfish) growing-up person.
Then you’re an adult, and no, you’ve not done something as dumb as that. Even then, are we beyond the need for a voice of clarity and truth speaking into our lives? My experience is no; in fact it seems to take no effort to pick up attitudes, prejudices, assumptions, and opinions which if I thought about them, I’d realize they were wrong-headed, dumb or even deleterious. Group think sticks to me just by walking through a crowd—it’s that effortless, and unnoticed. Then we have the Big Questions—God, religion, death—things which are hard to think about clearly and hardly anyone pays attention to any more, much less gets instruction in. I have no way to evaluate it except through my own experience, but we’re far more likely to get our opinions on the Big Questions from our crowd. CS Lewis, as an accomplished academician, had first-hand knowledge of this danger:
“You see, I know now. Let us be frank. Our opinions were not honestly come by. We simply found ourselves in contact with a certain current of ideas and plunged into it because it seemed modern and successful. At College, you know, we just started automatically writing the kind of essays that got good marks and saying the kind of things that won applause.
When, in our whole lives, did we honestly face, in solitude, the one question on which all turned: whether after all the Supernatural might not in fact occur? When did we put up one moment’s real resistance to the loss of our faith?” ( C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce)
We all face this kind of danger, every day, all around us. We are socially inclined (which is needed and good) but we often get the wires crossed between our own selves and the group. Then there is that little beast in us–the one that loves approval from the crowd–which is insatiable. And the beast is fed the bigger its stomach stretches. We consume peer opinions as if they were handed down from the Mount, not bothering to distinguish good thoughts from the ones the herd thinks. Our theology or worldview or questions about BIG stuff becomes the tangled mess of wires, but they’re ok, because they are our mess of wires and it’s familiar.
The danger exists for everyone: Christian, non-Christian, agnostic, atheist, and all other religious persuasions. Christ was no meek and mild Savior in this respect.
Christ is not solely Divine Love but Light of Light and Divine Wisdom—resulting on strong clear pronouncements, and “so inflammatory in His language that He was thrown out of church, stoned, hunted from place to place, and finally [given the death penalty] as a firebrand and a public danger. Whatever His peace was, it was not the peace of amiable indifference; and he said so in many words that what He brought with Him was fire and sword.” (Dorothy Sayers, Creed or Chaos?). However offensive He may be to some people, others to find His truth-telling a fresh water fountain of trustworthiness springing out of an ocean of private opinions. When He likened Himself to a house built on rock, this is what He was referring to: the trustworthiness of truth in the Loving Son of God.
As God the Son He continually called out people on faulty faith, faulty thinking but He was also the walking Face of God to the world, untangling the wires of confusion…and He still is.
-Charity Johnson
After the Rain
After the rain I survey the yard’s damage:
dead limbs, dead leaves, stones and pebbles washed down and piled around.
After the rain, I sigh, there is so much work!
Yet, when I look to the sky
the Creator God had been busy.
First, He cleansed the sky, washing the storm with white—then
covered it with a blue…
Looking into that blue,
I see not deep space nor, but
the centuries of Man and see the Father’s desire –
I see into Infinity.
Indescribable—unbelievable.
Back home, after the rain, the grass is greener (even mine).
Indeed, after the rain, the leaves are larger and buds have burst.
After the rain…well, I guess my work won’t be too bad, after all.
After my storm,
I survey the damage:
dead hopes, crashed dreams, proud thoughts, in a heap.
With this, my storm, I sigh, there was so much wrong!
Then, when I look into my heart.
His Spirit’s been busy.
He cleared out the dead limbs of clutched emotions,
and the fears of this world, which were once washed down and piled around in great heaps.
He, with one great motion,
Cleared both heart and mind, and impressing me with His love.
He then painted in deep colors on the canvas of my heart:
impressions of the great expanse of His love with all its vivid reality
Back within the walls of my heart, after the storm, life looks better (even mine).
After my storm, this, my earthly life, is blooming,
and the flower buds of my heart burst with love.
After my storm…well, I guess, the Spirit’s done His work, after all.
• Charity Johnson, 2009
“Why did I say that?
Where did that come from?”
Uh—I’m an Everyday Judas.
Unmistakable is family resemblance:
Adam, Eve, Judas and me.
I know the skin Judas wore.
But my betrayal is a yellow one,
hiding in shadows.
Did he look from afar at Golgatha Road?
Did he see the trail of blood and tears
unweepable by no one but God the Son?
In the wretched deep night of earthquakes—
when everything else was rent—
did his heart split in two
as his act rang gonging
over and over
in his ears, his head, his hands?
Judas, I know you too well:
The edges of an Everyday Judas
curls out of me and
pushes its way through my veneer.
Hideous. But worse, I mask my Judas
with a blanket self-righteousness.
Remind when I look to You, dear God,
of Your gentleness—
even as You take my betrayer’s kiss,
and my sour turns to sweet.
I hang it all on this hope:
a one-day annihilation of my Everyday Judas
in Your Coming brightness–
and the tight tenderness of Your embrace.
-Charity Johnson
