Catching my thoughts

While sitting in little church about two weeks ago, I found it hard to gather my thoughts. I tried to capture what was going on in my journal, and this is what came out.* The ending took me by surprise: it wasn't what I had in mind when I started writing, but it's what I saw as I played the scene in my mind's eye.

That thought.
The important one.
I just saw it.
But it disappeared into the crowd,
Moving among its brethren
Like a man who stepped out
Onto a busy sidewalk.

Every once in a while I see its head
Bob up from among the masses.
Or do I?
I can't really be sure.
Escape into the crowd
Is such a clever ploy.
I know it's there
But I can't catch it.

But then it stops.
It has caught sight of someone,
Or someone has caught sight of it.
It cannot run from that gaze,
But I cannot yet see the one
Who stopped it in its tracks.
But the crowd parts,
And now I know.

Who can hide from that fearful eye?
Who can stand before the King?
His eyes somehow melt the thought,
All the thoughts,
Until they vanish,
And it is me He is looking at.
No one can hide from that gaze.
I cannot hide from that gaze.

It is not the thought that was hiding from me.
I was hiding from You.
Forgive me, my God and king.
Forgive me.

* I added punctuation and made one minor edit, but this is basically what it looked like in my journal.

Breaking the silence (again)

While doing some research for a church history paper, I ran across this quote from Chêng Ching-yi, a Chinese delegate to the 1910 World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland:

You have sent us missionaries who gave us the knowledge of Jesus Christ, and for this we are profoundly grateful to you. But you have also brought us your divisions. We ask you, therefore, to preach only the Gospel to us and to allow Jesus Christ himself to raise up among our peoples, through the action of his Spirit, the Church that meets his norms and that is also in keeping with the character of our race: a Church that will be the Church of Christ in Japan, the Church of Christ in China, in India, and so on. But delivers from all the 'isms' which you attach to the preaching of the Gospel among us.

Wise words.