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 along.
In the discipline of praying,
When it's hardest to believe;






In the drudgery of caring,
When it's not enough to grieve;
Faith, maturing, learns acceptance
Of the insight 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!

Fred Pratt Green

images courtesy of all posters

Fred Pratt Green, A Methodist pastor, started writing plays and poetry when he was in college, publishing three collections of poems. He started writing hymns in his mid-sixties, many of which have been collected in The Hymns and Ballads of Fred Pratt Green.

Mimi