Minister’s message: Ask and you will receive

If our heart’s desire is for the Light that shone in the Lord Jesus to shine within us then we must seek, ask and knock, writes Rev James Gatherer.

For this was His promise ….

“Ask and you will receive; seek and you shall find; knock and the door will be opened.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) didn’t know he was a gifted poet.

In this Christmas poem he describes how he and his horse arrive at an inn tired and weary, lost in life. There he finds the Christmas Lord waiting to give him rest.

He asks the Lord to prepare his heart so that the Lord may find a dwelling there …

After all pleasures as I rid one day,
My horse and I, both tired, body and mind,
With full cry of affections, quite astray;
I took up the next inn I could find.

There when I came, whom found I but my dear,
My dearest Lord, expecting till the grief
Of pleasures brought me to Him, ready there
To be all passengers’ most sweet relief?

Oh Thou, whose glorious, yet contracted light,
Wrapt in night’s mantle, stole into a manger;
Since my dark soul and brutish is Thy right,
To man of all beasts be not Thou a stranger:

Furnish and deck my soul, that Thou mayst have
A better lodging, than a rack, or grave.

Photo: Snowy Bemerton, from a notecard provided by the George Herbert in Bemerton Group