When Our Confidence is Shaken

Dear Chrysanthemum,

I know you are still weak, lying on the bed, still with the drips. We are still waiting for more news from you, hoping against hope that you will be alright.

Work in the office is just a blurry existence of robotic movements. And I kept my silence, my secret of a friend stricken suddenly with a sickness that cannot be explained.

While waiting, my fingers run through the Hymnal again and again.

And this hour I ponder on this hymn, 505, When Our Confidence is Shaken.

When our confidence is shaken in beliefs we thought secure,
when the spirit in its sickness seeks but cannot find a cure,
God is active in the tensions of a faith not yet mature.

Solar systems, void of meaning, freeze the spirit into stone,
always our researches lead us to the ultimate unknown.
Faith must die, or come full circle to its source in God alone.

In the discipline of praying, when its hardest to believe,
in the drudgery of caring, when it's not enough to grieve,
faith maturing, learns acceptance of the insights we receive.

God is love, and thus redeems us in the Christ we crucify,
this is God's eternal answer to the world's eternal why.
May we in this faith maturing be content to live and die.

Words : Fred Pratt Green. 1971.

And I pray that tomorrow, yes , tomorrow with the sunshine, hope will come again.

Dear God in heaven hear our prayers.