POETRY

What is the cry of your heart?

Collective reflections from 7th Triennial Micah Global Consultation

Sarah Larkina

a BA (Religious Studies), MA (Pastoral Theology), Poet, Integral Alliance, London, UK

The axe is laid at the root of the tree
And we are laid bare
What do we need to recover to endure -------
Invasive interactions
Fragile states Race hate
Virtual reality
Unending strife
The spirit behind repeated lies
That makes us despair of all life?

From home-less to human-ness to Jesus-ness;
O Lord, let there be
Salt and light to overcome the night.

Let there be a way
To close the chasm between people in the Church-Fractured
O let the Church-Bride in all her glory arise,
So that people world-wide would see Jesus with new eyes,
Catch His sacred heart

From the days of John the Baptist until now
The Kingdom of God advances.
So let us passionately lay hold
That our work would truly serve Thy Kingdom
And not MY EGO.

Because
God is NOT
A donor,
An NGO,
A CEO,
A nation-state
God is God -

Not an entity made in OUR image and likeness
Or an instrument of our own global agendas.
That’s a lie! The utter opposite is true.
We are made in God’s image and likeness to reflect His glory.
So - let us reframe the story!

From home-less to human-ness to Jesus-ness;
Let us stop talking about disasters as one-off events
And really start reducing risks,
Cover Vulnerability’s living village
With Jesus’ blood-stained robe of righteousness.
Let us be counted amongst the wise
And build on the Rock of Refuge and not on the sinking sands.

And let us hold the hand of the many orphaned sons and daughters
Of the living Almighty – all forgiving – all loving – all knowing God of all gracious-ness.

But knowing deeply that we too are orphaned sons and daughters,
Eternal life inheritors – adopted and adopting - forgiven and forgiving – loved and loving –
Known and knowing, that the God of all gracious-ness
Holds our hand through the storm, as we reach for others’
And oppose the hand of the oppressor.

What is the cry of my heart?
To see, taste, and hear the emergence of new and abundant life and health,
And know it’s all from God
And together, globally - not so much to go forth
But to accept the Great Invitation to come
To His table, the feast, the marriage supper of the Lamb.

The table is laid, though there may be enemies all around,
All are invited

But what, what is that sound?
Rain pouring, pounding, battering the hard, hard ground.
Let us stand out in it
And get soaked through to our many-shaded skins.

But what, what is that sound?
Wind blowing, billowing, bending the bamboo.
Let us stand out in it
To blow the century’s old dust away.
Lock our roots like the mangrove

From home-less to human-ness to Jesus-ness;
Let us reframe and not be ashamed,
Tell our stories with honest abandon
Tales of the One who loved us, re-made us, healed us and loves us still,
That we too may deeply love and nourish
The whole wonderful COSMOS that the God who is God has made.

Creator, Sustainer, Healer and Judge,
Matchless in your majesty,
Wonderful in your wisdom,
Glorious in your beauty.
Let us ask each other and the nations: What is your story?

What is the cry of your heart?
That the local church begins to see their vital place
In bringing holistic transformation to people regardless of religious affiliation
For the common good.

And let the Church be the Church:
The responsible and gifted community
Of the God who is God
And let her be who He has ordained her to be,
The only truly transformational change agent in this wide-world

What is the cry of your heart?
To see the Church-Bride empowered to sincerely serve the community,
To be Manifest-ors and Bring-ers of abundant, overflowing life
Carrying as vessels, living water in dry and thirsty lands.

What is the cry of your heart?
To learn the dance of renewal
And then to dance the dance of the all-renewing God who is God.

What is the cry of my heart?
To see with my inner eye God's new day, His new heaven and earth, His new morning mercy
And that the deepest cry of my heart be the deepest cry of His heart
That the God who is God, would give the modality, the solidarity
To be a visible expression in the community of his unending, everlasting love.

What is the cry of our hearts?
O let the joy of the Lord be our strength –
May we take off our disguises
And let that God-infused strength be enough for all our sunrises.

From home-less to human-ness to Jesus-ness;
Let us live in the eternal mystery revealed
That the God who became Man hallowed our Human-ness
That we would never need to stay in everlasting same-ness

So let us pray together now as our Lord and Master, Saviour, Teacher and Friend taught us to pray
Our Father who art in heaven
Hallowed be you Name…

Competing Interests: None declared.

Correspondence: Sarah Larkin (née Fordham), London, UK. sarahlarkin68@gmail.com. http://scfordham.blogspot.com. Integral Alliance (www.integralalliance.org)

Acknowledgements: Micah Global (www.micahglobal.org) and the participants of the 7th Triennial Micah Global Consultation on Integral Mission and Resilient Communities held 10-14 September 2018 Tagaytay City, Cavite, Philippines (http://micahgc2018.org). Responses to the question “What is the cry of your heart?” were collected during the 5-day consultation and the original draft of the poem was recited by the author during the main closing session, thus representing a diverse expression of participants, integrated with some compelling didactic content from the speakers, to capture some of the collective spirit of the gathering of 452 leaders from 68 countries.

Cite this article as: Larkin S. What is the cry of your heart? Collective reflections from 7th Triennial Micah Global Consultation. Christian Journal for Global Health. Nov 2018; 5(3):55-58. https://doi.org/10.15566/cjgh.v5i3.257

© Author. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly cited. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/