Knowledge of God

Knowing of God we have together…

What else when
God is love
One Father delighting in his Son—the crucified
And pouring out for him
A blessing on the world
And we, endowed in him
His Brothers, Bride and Body
Receiving in our flesh
His Spirit.

What else when, together, we are
Sealed by Christ, our Brother
Who does not think our faults
A blemish on the relationship
But bound them to himself
To awful death
And rose with peace for us to share
As family.

What else when
All of us have
Died one death
Live in Christ one life before the Father
Understand together the shedding of false glory
The bonding of a single trust
One heart to cry ‘You know I love you!’
And one hope that Christ may take his glory
One Spirit in us crying
‘Father!’
With all the dignity and passion Jesus brought to that cry
Union beyond describing
One cry—demanding not just access but for
The covenant to be fulfilled
When all the nations own one Lord
Our hearts all focused
In the love of him
One cry—with Christ—of ‘Abba’ on our lips
Annulling all the usual cut and thrust
Of anxious self protection
One Man’s pain
Sufficing
For all our sins against each other
One Man’s virtue
Sufficient
To give dignity to all.

What else when
Every breath of love and faith and hope
Are shared
When gifts to others are servant to our lack
And gifts to each hang listless ’til they centre on another.

(Yet here is
Cause for lasting shame
When what we’d known of him seemed lost in
Fretfulness
Competition with each other for a nameless prize
Resentment of improvement in the other
Arrogant supposing that our life should be convenient
And our peers already perfected
So pushing to the perimeter all the joy we had
Suggesting to our minds that joy of grace
Was transitory.

And yet again
Grace floods our arid self
This exposé of us
A part of grace—to show that
Never did we have a righteousness our own
That all is owed to Christ
That he alone has rights his own before the Father
Our sideways glances we have learned to put away
For fear of not being found in him
Choice of love to be at one with him
In love of one-another
Looking now at others as more worthy of his love
Than us.)

No closeness like this bond
No knowledge of the Father so rich as when it’s known
Together
(Our present life all hid in Christ)
True tribute to the Father that his love has made us
One.

Grant Thorpe; 1991

Knowledge of God (PDF)