When you’re perplexed, and vexed confusions in your mind

Go back to Jesus

He is the schoolroom of deliverance

From all complaint

He holds the cordial words of elemental life

The civilisation of the heart’s primordial strifes

The Lord has laid down for us better ways to follow

Along with His meet life to grant to us tomorrow

He has promised (and I surely must believe Him)

The Truth is His and serves to set us free

Free of our contumelies and self-regards, our vanities

His love, which is of truth invincible, the best,

He pledges as instinct imprint upon our hearts

Eyes open, read His sayings in The Bible: they abound

Revolve them; your resource; they of a course

Make the nine spheres go round

Set upside-down a turning the earth, undoing quarrels

Those labours against neighbours angry rancour follows

Such words He spoke as no man ever spoke, before or since

Words working on we shreds to fetch a mellowed, chastened, wince

To have thought to think ourselves above, beyond, reproach

Bring us before The Throne of Grace; a repentant, sad, approach

A sorry set of selves rebuked, restored, renewed

Though here there rigs no system fix and set on hand to use

As if there were a formula which only read aright

Gives secret easy recourse and its logic anthracite

No, Jesus asks for more, far more, than references and rules

No Index or Thesaurus here to lift a sense from moulds

No, His concerns for us rose past the portal of His lips

Reported faithfully, minute and clear, sublime recorded gifts

A legacy verbatim, delivered solemn offerings

The sweetest sayings for our sakes, all to our betterings

Rare treasures reinforced, exampled by his manner, deeds,

A miracle; a healing; consolations and remeads

The gospels they are Gennesaret, that Lake of Galilee,

His spoken zeal, the fish; like awestruck John and James we see

Brought-in abounding, trawled, from the good side of the boat

Enough and more provision; parable with anecdote

Go back, return to Jesus

Settle discords in the way

Let spats dissolve, have doubts resolve, use honest harmony

Accord which sweeps your rooms, discovers your lost shilling

Accord which not by tropes binds, but by simple willing

Accord, arising perfumed from His holy Presence

Where two or three together are, and all is pleasance

Go back, return to Jesus

Receive your purchase whole

Return again to Jesus what the devil slyly stole

When in your breast he planted first the seeds of tares that grow

And interfere and tangle there with wheat your Saviour sows

Return a hundredfold times; again seventy times seven

There is no upper ceiling that prevents our hope of heaven

Intending and attempting further in an earnest trust,

Persevering as that half-thing turning something new from dust

As if an elevation on a drawing board, a draft

Becoming paradigm

Our Father fines the dust, improves the drawing draft

Unfolding our designs,

Whose taints confess our failure – notions to be rinsed throughout

Reworking finishes our peace, mends, presses, tailors,

The apex and the dearest suit of all God’s gracious favours

The blesséd pearl set forth in Holy Scripture, freely given

See set red, as if it were bled, in many a Bible written

Not signing danger, caution, as red spells, foretells, with us

Nor indicating imminence of a passing London bus

Indeed, instead, red measures out in happy amplitudes

That reverence and honour Jesus as our faith enjoys

Across the spatial globe no name stands near his pale

Were we frisk minnows He would be a mighty whale

Leviathan and huge, vastly compassionating

Forsaking jars, breaking-down bars; always through celebration

In witness of that Spirit condescended by the cross;

Those lashes, crucifixion, and the weary pains that cost

To rescue man so span a glorious Resurrection

To scuttle sins command, disposed of, once for all defeated

To hell where woes began returned; having ruled all the ages

Placed on those backs who’d taxed, the first who erred, upstart pretenders

Whose course denied God’s law, in doing burnt their fingers

Who still without excuse refuse His furlough tender

Which centres in our Mentor in the breast of Jesus;

These devils cavils only earn them rebel thorns and teasels

We are by kindly teachers taught that God works all for good,

All things rolled-in together

Even those fractured precious parts churned by the would-be clever

Misguided folk, or rather worse, the world’s brute bruisers

Who for their shallow egos’ sakes poison all waters

Pour sullied spoil and rotted drosses, the fellows go proclaiming

Not lowly Jesus, but crow a Jesus of their despotic shames

Them Jesus pities; nonetheless He thwarts them

In ways betiding good; and sometimes harshly they are paid

By way of tenderness they are prevented; therefore let you note:

Get back to Jesus

To Him every time you err go back, implore Him

And take with you your angers wormwood, meekly lay them

There at His feet, and you be there; be mended; and begin.