The light shines in the darkness
and the darkness could not put it out…
Acrylic by Jenny McLellan.
Earlier this year, we (Pam, my wife and I) visited a long-standing friend of ours who is fortunate enough to live on the Island of Iona, one of our very favourite places. Jenny was among the first people we got to know on the island.Whilst we were with Jenny, I was very struck by a picture hanging in her lounge that she had painted. I loved its exuberance and asked Jenny’s permission to post it on my blog, to sit alongside one of my writings.
Since then, I have looked, from time to time, among the many things I have written over the years, but, until today, I had not found a piece that felt quite right to go with the painting. Then, looking back to the earliest posts on this blog, I found this, entitled In The Deep and Dark Recesses of Space. I had not in those early days always tried to find an image to accompany my poems or reflections but this now leapt out at me as an appropriate partnering, for in the fifth stanza, the sort of immeasurable momentum the picture conveys to me could conceivably reverberate the turmoil we know to exist in distant and still unknown cosmic regions,
So here, the picture, and what I style as a Little Canticle, sit side by side and I hope Jenny feels similarly about the coupling I have made.
In the deep and dark recesses of space, God moves.
In the whirling orderliness of galaxies, God moves.
In the precise and sensitive balances which hold planetary and galactic systems together, God moves.
In the continuously gigantic forces which fashion and refashion stars, God moves.
In conditions of turmoil in the firmament which confound our understanding, God moves.
In the preservation of the cosmic vastness, God moves.
In the gift of light across the universe and to a darkened world, God moves.
Yet amidst these cosmic realities he is mindful of humanity: he gave his Son to suffer our woes and his Spirit to comfort us.
How can we comprehend the substance of one so great? Who could destroy the universe with a word?
Whose great love has not only given all that we can see and hear on earth and in the depths of space, but far, far more.
Is it little wonder angels worship him? Or that saints give everlasting praise?
Yet this is a God who hears us if we call upon him: He will bid us, "Come".
Not into the great turmoil of incomprehension; but into the tiny stillness of expectant silence.
Open our hearts and our minds, O God; to see your hand in the universe and hear your voice in the quietness of contemplation.
Another meditation on the greatness of God at work in the Universe can be found at Galaxies Tell of Your Might
Other poems, meditations and songs with a SCIENCE & FAITH theme can be accessed HERE
