Category Archives: By Elaine Gingrich

Jesus in the Room [Poem by Mom]

September 19, 2015 Dwight Gingrich 17 Comments

We all need more love than we deserve. And it is undeserved love that transforms us into who we should be.

It is love that frees us to acknowledge sin, both ours and others. And it is love that frees us from sin and from its shadow, shame.

Here is a new poem from Mom about the transforming power of Jesus’ loving presence. I’ll let Mom explain how the poem came to be.

Many books, blogs and posts today deal with the issues of sexual abuse and sexual sin in various forms. Questions of blame, shame and the process to freedom abound. Two things, it seems to me, are certain. We are all sinners in need of Christ’s forgiveness and cleansing; and everyone, no matter how heinous his sin or how deep his wounds, needs the compassion of Christians and the biblical message of truth and deliverance. If only we could always respond as Jesus would!

These thoughts framed my recent devotional reading of Luke 7:36-50, the account of the “woman who was a sinner,” who dared to enter a Pharisee’s house because she heard Jesus was there. What had she heard from Jesus’ lips that propelled her into a home where she was unwelcome, that braced her to face the scorn of the guests, and gave her the courage to approach the holy God-man? How I longed to glimpse just for a moment how Christ’s deity, veiled in humanity, expressed itself.

As I read, I seemed to slip in beside her, to see Jesus’ form lying there, to hear His quiet voice. The woman knew, without seeing His face, that He knew she was there. Just for a moment I was at her side experiencing the physical nearness of Jesus; the power of His words of clarity and compassion, able to convict and to protect; the magnetism of His readiness to deliver and forgive. His presence was like a fortress in a room full of enemies.

Just for a moment… and then I was only seeing my open Bible, but moved deeply and longing to express what I had felt when I was in the room with Jesus. Robert J. Morgan says that “the art of meditating on Scripture involves using one’s imagination.” He records how the beloved hymn “In the Garden” was written by C. Austin Miles from a vision he experienced while reading John 20. My sensation was far too brief to be labelled a vision and the poem I have written is not a hymn. But I pray this poem will bring you for a moment into the presence of Jesus, to a place of listening and hearing, so that His Word and Spirit can live through you to a needy world.

—Elaine Gingrich, September 14, 2015

JESUS IN THE ROOM
Luke 7:36-50

I slip into the dining hall,
An uninvited guest.
I heard he is reclining here—
The object of my quest.

The host disdains me—only loves
Those who return in kind.
His righteousness gives me no hope,
Blind leader of the blind.

How dare I touch this holy man
With my sin-scalding hands?
But oh, his voice is like a bell
Across interior lands.

It tolls each conscience in the room.
My tears are hot with pain.
His feet accept my ministry.
He shares in my disdain.

This man looks deep into my eyes
As father would to child,
While others only see my form,
Voluptuous but defiled.

His eyes burn as he names my sin,
Names but does not condemn.
My sin was great, but so my love!
And now he points at them.

I’m not the only sinner here.
His voice a sheltering arm
Around the shoulders of my guilt
Addresses those who harm.

He speaks forgiveness to my shame.
His voice is like a breeze
That blows the perfume of my love
To others on their knees.

Oh Jesus, are You in this room?
I bring my oil and tears.
By faith I hear forgiveness speak
Across two thousand years.

Your voice pours ointment on our wounds,
Commands our fears to flee.
Oh speak your hope into this room
Oh speak and set us free.

—Elaine Gingrich, September 5, 2015

For the rest of the poems in this monthly series, see here.

And if you enjoyed this poem (and want to encourage Mom to keep writing new ones!), leave a comment here for Mom, or send her an email at . Thanks!

By Elaine Gingrich

Fresh Milling [Poem by Mom]

August 21, 2015 Dwight Gingrich 4 Comments

Do you look like Jesus today? Listen to Paul’s testimony and promise:

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. (2 Cor. 3:18)

In these busy summer days, stop to gaze. Glance up. Turn from work to worship. Schedule an August audience in his august presence. Renew your acquaintance, and renew your resemblance.

Here are two writings from my mother—prose and poetry—to help you turn your eyes upon Jesus.

BEING GRANDMA

Ken and I have just returned from a few days at a lakeside cottage with our oldest son and his wife and their five young daughters. I spent time with the girls splashing in the shallow beach and watching the older girls learn to swim. We played games and sang around the campfire. We studied God’s creation, the little fish in the clear water, the different bugs and birds. We fed the ducks, listened to the loons and explored the lake. The girls cast lines for elusive fish.

Photo Credit: Paul R Lamb via Compfight cc

Now that I am home, five unique voices calling “Grandma, look” echo in my memory. I carry fresh imprints of each granddaughter on my heart. New memories are impressed on my mind and I feel a deeper bond with their individual personalities. I watched them conquering fear, shyness and impatience. I saw what makes them excited, bored, curious, restless. I learned what they are reading, writing, singing and laughing about. They taught me a new song about a worm in a box that, every time we sang the song, (gasps of wonder) turned into a butterfly! I watched their eyes sparkle as Daddy played guitar and they sang along. I listened to a toddler delight in singing “How Great Thou Art.”

When we left them at the cottage their hugs and ongoing chorus of good-byes sent me home feeling so loved as a grandma. Though we are in the same community and church, in the busyness of daily life we can get out of touch. Some of our grandchildren live far away making it even harder to stay connected. I spend a lot of time with the elderly in hymn sing ministries and with my mother who lives with us. Sometimes the responsibilities of life can almost make me forget that I am a grandmother.

Because interacting with all five girls at once can be overwhelming I recently invited the older ones to visit me two at a time. It was so rewarding. I learned their faces, voices and smiles in a new way. I discovered a common interest with one granddaughter that immediately drew us closer together in a delightful personal connection. I gained a new vision and longing to bless our grandchildren.

Though I am always a grandmother, I need time with my grandchildren to make it real, to refresh the essence of being a grandparent into my soul.

In a similar way, although I am God’s child, in this world of distractions and distortions, of pressures that would mold me into ungodliness, I too need time alone with Him if I want to truly know Him and to have His image real and reflected in me. This poem prayer reflects that longing.

—Elaine Gingrich, August 2015

FRESH MILLING

Photo Credit: Lawrence Chard via Compfight cc

Lord, let us not like coins rubbed smooth and faceless
By constant mixing in the purse or hand,
Become, like all the world of coins around us,
Innocuously indistinct and bland.

Lord, spare us from the polishing of theory,
The shrewd abrasion of materialism,
From fads that fool the crowd and cause us, weary,
To lose our message of evangelism.

Lord, call us each when we are worn and dented,
For time alone with You in some still place
To stamp upon our coin, like freshly minted,
The express image of Your glorious face.

—Elaine Gingrich, November 1994

For the rest of the poems in this monthly series, see here.

And if you enjoyed this poem, leave a comment here for Mom, or send her an email at . Thanks!

By Elaine Gingrich

Infinitude [Poem by Mom]

July 20, 2015 Dwight Gingrich 2 Comments

Have you been following the story of NASA’s mission to Pluto? A spacecraft named New Horizons that left earth on January 19, 2006 just reached Pluto this month. Scientists are eagerly devouring new images and data from this ninth rock from the sun. As one writer put it, the trickle of data “has been enough to completely overthrow our theories of what we expected to find at the icy little world and its family of moons.” New information is leading to new questions faster than you can say “To be or not to be a planet? That is the question.”

Something similar happens as we grow in our knowledge of God. Please don’t misunderstand me: God is indeed the supreme “Self-Revelator,” as Mom writes in the poem below. We can indeed know him and his ways meaningfully. And we are fully responsible for that knowledge. But we will never know him completely. And that is good. To imagine otherwise is folly.

Here is Mom’s poem for the month. Read and worship.

INFINITUDE

The farther the telescopes search through the blackness,
The vaster the universe left to explore.
Space endlessly stretches, star-studded and trackless,
As much as we fathom, there always is more.

We dissect life’s building blocks, minute, invisible,
Peer with a microscope, ponder and probe.
Still vainly we seek for the one indivisible—
Particles spinning, each atom a globe.

The longer we gaze at the matchless Creator,
The greater the vistas awaiting our view—
The incomprehensible Self-Revelator
Whose mercies and mysteries each morning are new.

We love Him, the intimate Friend of our spirit,
His rays undetected by human device,
His being unfathomed although we’re so near it:
To know Him—eternity will not suffice.

—Elaine Gingrich, April 1986

For the rest of the poems in this monthly series, see here.

And if you enjoyed this poem, leave a comment here for Mom, or send her an email at . Thanks!