I am the absence

Luke 19: 39-40 Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!” "I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”

The last sola of the Reformation is sola deo gloria or "to the glory of God alone." Essentially, this is the idea that our lives should be lived primarily for the sake of giving glory to God (rather than to ourselves or our politics or our ideologies).

Today we offer up Mark Strand's poem "Keeping Things Whole" as a way of contemplating this idea. 

Keeping Things Whole

by Mark Strand

In a field

I am the absence

of field.

This is

always the case.

Wherever I am

I am what is missing.

When I walk

I part the air

and always

the air moves in   

to fill the spaces

where my body’s been.

We all have reasons

for moving.

I move

to keep things whole.