Alive, Awake, Alert: Poetic Meditations in the Company of Father, Son, and Spirit

By Cynthia J. Griffin

Dead or alive? Drowsy or awake? Distracted or alert? How do we respond to the Apostle Pauls charge to be alive together with Christ, awake even at night, and alert in unceasing prayer?

Layered with scriptural allusions, Cynthia Griffins Alive, Awake, Alert, a collection of 101 poems, sounds a call to live fully in Christ, to wake from apathy, and to watch with alertness to the Holy Spirit. With an energetic and concise style, she offers readers a combination of soberness and delight. Packed with doctrine, wit, and imagery, her poetry provides readers with a meaty meal. No cotton candy Christianity here!

Like a digger of ancient wells, she unearths rhyme, rhythm, and structure reminiscent of Donne, Herbert, and Hopkins to craft over fifty sonnets bursting with joyous faith, vulnerable reality, and thought-provoking metaphors.

The Introduction invites readers to come to the Lords table for constant nourishment on Gods Word in unceasing meditation. In Part One: Responses in Communion with the Host, the poems are prayer reflections addressed to God Himself, Father, Son, and Spirit. In Part Two: Conversations in the Cloud of Witnesses, perspectives from both Old Testament saints and New Testament disciples combine with the poets voice in an enriching dialogue of faith. After most poems, biblical references follow providing interpretative context. For readers who enjoy deeper analysis, the Addendum: Authors Annotations gives background and additional references for the meditations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Dec 2, 2015
• ISBN: 9781512719284

Cynthia J. Griffin

Cynthia Griffin, worshiper, wife, mother, teacher, quilter, poet, holds bachelor’s degrees in English and psychology from Indiana University and a master’s degree in clinical psychology from Miami University. Active in youth, women, and prayer ministries, Cynthia encourages her readers to live at Christ’s table, full of His Word and His Spirit.

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Copyright © 2015 Cynthia J. Griffin

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Illustrated by Angela C. Griffin

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org)

Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright ©1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-5127-1929-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-1930-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-1928-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015918672

WestBow Press rev. date: 12/01/2015

Contents

Dedication

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part I Responses in Communion with the Host

1. The Best Company

2. Am I Ready?

3. More Important

4. Continual Attention

5. That’s What You Do

6. Soil at Your Feet

7. Blood Type

8. Breathing, I Spew

9. Your Intentions

10. I Kiss You Back

11. Resolved

12. Still Writing

13. My Pen Dances

14. Fire Man: As Love, He Burns Unquenchable

15. Withstanding Hands

16. Palm Prints

17. Lovely Feet

18. Rest in Revelation

19. Bound in the Bundle

20. Viaticum

21. I Cannot Peek

22. Incorruptible

23. I Claw

24. You Set Me Spinning

25. Liberty Bell

26. One Who Counts

27. Subject’s the Spirit

28. My Fireworks

29. Shake-n-Quake!

30. Victory in Me

31. A Hundred Roots

32. Brainwash

33. From the Bliss, To the Bliss

34. Instead

35. My Belief in Relief

36. Scrub the Scum

37. A Hold to Hold

38. Alert to Your Deserve

39. Necessity

40. The Wonderful, Terrible Fear

41. Repose

42. No Wolf

43. To Know

44. True to Form

45. Forever Feast

46. Let Us Go Over

47. With Ev’ry Wing

48. The Thief’s Undoing: A Prayer of Intercession

49. The Sting-Remover Speaks

50. The Wynn of God: Creation

Part II Conversations in the Cloud of Witnesses

51. Let’s Get Fat

52. Living Under the Influence: L.U.I.

53. Fresh Fruit

54. One was All

55. The Turn of my Captivity

56. Hey Joe, What a Show! [Genesis 37-50]

57. I Heard the Hyssop

58. Rahab’s Rope

59. Kinswoman

60. In all Directions

61. I Fall in Awe

62. Restrained Knees

63. The Breaking

64. The Executor

65. A Thorn Path

66. Impelled

67. And Many More

68. The Husbandman

69. Just the Carpenter?

70. So as I Go

71. His Perfect Timing: Lazarus’ Retelling [John 11]

72. Screaming Stones

73. Beauty Before the Burial

74. Insistent Ban

75. Ascender

76. Axios

77. Runaway’s Reach

78. Inauguration Day

79. His Adieu

80. Love to the Uttermost

81. So Glad

82. Deployed

83. Wisdom Still Speaking

84. Ev’ry Single Thing

85. Cat’s Concordance

86. Practicing

87. Finding

88. Other Vine

89. Undistracted

90. O Earth, This Earth

91. The Saving that We Crave

92. See and Swoon

93. Darkened by the Deepest Dye

94. Unvarnished Voice

95. Confetti

96. The Elevator

97. Homemade Clothes

98. Unaltered

99. Worship in the Wild

100. Embrasure

101. The Wynn of Abba and the Spirit: the Son

Appendix: Author’s Annotations

Endnotes

Dedication

To Father, Son, and Spirit,

to live is You, to die is gain

To my beloved husband,

Eric Scott Griffin,

who fills our marriage and family with spoken Scripture

and began our courtship by writing poetry to me on handmade cards.

To my adoring Daddy,

John Crouder Carvey (1916-2005),

who marked my birth and every Christmas with a new rhyme.

I can still hear his advice about writing: Every word matters.

To my loving mother,

Carolla Jeanne [Flentke] Carvey (1923-2013),

who loved to sing rhyming songs and recite poetry from her childhood.

When her memory faded, she could still remember and pray Psalm 23.

To my three precious children,

whose lives are living letters of God’s grace and truth:

Ashley Elizabeth, a writer who builds

Angela Christine, a writer who draws

Christopher John, a writer who speaks

To the poet-saints across the centuries whose poems

fill literary anthologies and church hymnals

Preface

Alive

Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus… . present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.

Romans 6:11, 13b

But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), . . .

Ephesians 2:4-5

Unresurrected by Christ’s life, we are dead.

Awake

. . . knowing the time, that it is already the hour for you to awaken from sleep; for now salvation is nearer to us than when we believed. The night is almost gone, and the day is at hand. Let us therefore lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.

Romans 13:11-12

For this reason it says, "Awake, sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. Ephesians 5:14

Unpenetrated by Christ’s light, we are drowsy.

Alert

With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view,

be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints.

Ephesians 6:18

Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving;

Colossians 4:2

Unenamored by Christ’s loveliness, we are distracted.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to my precious family: Eric, Ashley, Angela, and Christopher for encouraging me through the labor pains of this book. Your editing help and listening ears kept me going when hurdles blocked my way. Angela, I especially appreciate your willingness to design the cover image and illustrations.

Thank you to Westbow Press for making these sonnets and scribbles into a book. My particular thanks extend to Jon Lineback for his patience over several years of phone calls and his meeting with me and two of my children in Bloomington. Thanks also to Andrew Carter for his timely understanding and encouragement during the editing stage.

Thank you to the ladies of The Gate Community Church for allowing me to share my poetry with you at several of the Women in Worship nights. I also appreciate the prayer and support of the Worship Community and Pastoral Staff.

Thank you to the retired and current English Faculty at The Academy Tutorial: Colleen Whitver, Diane West, Cherie Shepherd, David Shepherd, Sharon Reyes, Rachel Boye, Karen Costello, Taylor Hare, Mimi Davis, Vicki Day, Kathleen Bond, and Becky Durham. Each of you have poured into me in different ways that inspire and sharpen me.

Unending thanks to Father, Son, and Spirit, the great I AM. You did not forget about the 3rd grade girl who dreamed of writing a book. Thank You for your tender mercies, new every morning.

Introduction

O taste and see that the LORD is good.

Psalm 34:8a

Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es.

[Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.]

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savain, 1826¹

God Sets the Table

What’s for dinner? How many times have we heard this question, or asked it, or thought it? As long as we are alive and awake, we have a perpetual need to eat. Have you ever seen a dead or sleeping person eating a meal? And if we are alert, then we pay careful attention to what we eat. Without alertness, we nibble on food that could harm rather than nourish and gradually conform to others’ tastes rather than ingest what is good.

From the opening account of creation in the book of Genesis, God has provided the means for His people’s sustenance. His design of the human body with its daily desire to consume carries meaning beyond just the physical. The Scriptures are full of words that convey God’s intimate care, detailed instructions, and abundant supply for our hunger and thirst: eat, drink, feed, taste, nourish, feast, meal, table, bread, water, wine, milk, honey, manna, grain, fruit, provision, banquet. I invite you to pause and consider how all of this food talk forms a symbolic motif, a repeated pattern, through which He paints and reminds His people of His supernatural provision for our needs, which is far more important and long-lasting than food and drink for our physical bodies. Being alive, awake, and alert in Christ necessitates that we grow in our understanding of how to seat ourselves at the LORD’s table, where He is our Host who welcomes, and our companions are all who have believed in the LORD’s Anointed, Christ.

In order to know our Host, let us examine a few passages having to do with Yahweh’s table in the Old Testament. In Genesis 43:34 we see a glimpse of a royal table that belongs to Joseph, a Christ-figure; here his brothers receive forgiveness, reconciliation, and honor. In Exodus 25:23-30, God gives Moses detailed instructions to build an acacia wood table for the Bread of the Presence in the Tabernacle’s Holy Place which will reflect light from the lampstand due to the gold overlay on this table’s surface. When we pray Psalm 23, a song of David, we proclaim the Shepherd’s promise of security and victory for those who sit at the table He has prepared, even though enemies prowl at the perimeter (Psalm 23:5). In addition, David foreshadows the greater King because he makes his royal table a place of promise, acceptance, and constancy when he invites Jonathon’s crippled son Mephibosheth to eat at my table regularly as one of the king’s sons (2 Samuel 9:10). Asaph recounts the rebellion and doubt of the Israelites in the journey to the promised land with the rhetorical question Can God prepare a table in the wilderness? reminding his listeners that God can prepare a meal in dry and deserted places (Psalm 78:19). From Solomon we learned that the king’s banquet table has a banner of love overhead as the celebrants fill the hall with their perfume of adoration to the king (Song of Solomon 1:12, 2:4). Ezekiel prophesies of a future when the faithful priests of the LORD shall enter My sanctuary; they shall come near to My table to minister to me and keep My charge (Ezekiel 44:16). Clearly, an understanding from the Old Testament about God’s table underlays Jesus’ spoken declaration and clear demonstration that He Himself is the food and drink in His Father’s kingdom: Authority forgives, Bread fulfills, Shepherd prepares, King feeds, Water flows, and the Priest ministers.

Jesus Makes the Meal

With whom did Jesus keep company when He sat down to eat? In the accounts from the four gospels, we see Jesus sharing meals with both his friends and foes: Bethany’s Mary, Martha, and Lazarus; Zaccheus; His disciples; a pharisee; tax-gatherers; sinners; two Emmaus road travellers. How the Father welcomes all to come to the table through His Son! In Luke’s account of two of Jesus’ parables in chapter 14, the stories portray the importance of humility, gratitude, and acceptance when dining with the Master. One of Christ’s companions remarked: Blessed is everyone who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God! So what is this heavenly food and how can we partake of it? (Luke 14:15)

Jesus Himself answered these questions about the satisfaction of our need. After His miraculous feeding of more than five thousand men, women, and children, He called all who could hear His voice to think beyond their stomachs.

Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man shall give to you, for on Him the Father, even God has set His seal… . This is the work of God that you believe in Him whom He sent… Truly, truly, I say to you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread out of heaven, but it is My Father who gives you the true bread of heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world… I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me shall not hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst. . . I am the bread that came down out of heaven. (John 6:27, 29, 32-33, 35, 41)

Soon after in the synagogue in Capernaum, He continued speaking on the same theme, but to a different audience:

I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died… . I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he shall live forever; and the bread also which I shall give for the life of the world is My flesh… . Truly, truly, I say to you unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life… . For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. He who eats My flesh and