Recently I’ve been doing a few posts on facebook and myspace looking behind the lyrics of the songs from the CD ‘For All The Times’. At the moment we’re up to track 7 ‘O Hear The Word’ but if you want to check out previous postings head to either of those sites.

‘O Hear The Word’ is a poem written by my friend C. Baxter Kruger back in 1992 in his book entitled ‘God Is For US’. The Lyrics are as follows.

o hear the word declared to you as He became a man
the Father’s passion ceases not for His eternal plan
wake up and see the time is full the great exchange has come
the Son of God stands in our place the Father’s will is done

o look and see the ancient Son though rich became so poor
with our own poverty He fought and blow by blow endured
wake up and see His painful wealth for this He came to be
the treasure of the Triune life in our humanity

o see our awful flesh embraced by Him who dwells on high
He plunged into our darkness to bring the light of life
wake up and see amazing grace in flesh the Father
to share with us within our reach the life that is His own

o Spirit grant with unveiled face that we this man would see
and know His heart and soul and mind and share His victory
inspire our empty hearts to run to this vicarious one
and give us fellowship with Him the Father’s One true Son

I remember a few years ago I was looking for a song to sing at a Christmas function I was doing and I stumbled across this poem at the end of Baxter’s book. It is such a brilliant poem, and filled with so much depth and richness in the lyrics that I wanted to put some music to it and sing it.

This song is one of my favourite songs especially verse 3 where it says o see our awful flesh embraced by Him who dwells on high. He plunged into our darkness to bring the light of life. It reminds me that Christ entered our darkness. He wasn’t holding anything back, He came in FULL flesh, He felt our pain, our brokenness and our blindness. Dived right into the middle of it and brought us home.

The first melody line sounded a lot like O Little Town of Bethlehem — I guess one of the quirks of writing at Christmas time, but with a little help from Mike we were able to get something a little bit different that people could sing to.

If you haven’t read any of Baxter’s books I would encourage you to look him up. You can check out his blog at www.perichoresis.org or even get the book ‘God Is For Us’ at this site.

Yesterday I played at Penshurst Anglican Church and was given a theme of Jesus the High Priest / Jesus the Mediator to fit in with. As I only had a couple of songs that fitted in with that theme I wanted to write a new song which summarized what I thought it meant as Jesus being our High Priest and Mediator. This is what I came up with. Let me know what you think.

born into humanity
the Father’s beloved Son
to show us who we really are
to show the Father’s love

now at the right hand of the Father
standing at His side
our life is now forever
included in Christ

we’re included in His life
we’re included in His death
and when He rose we rose
He brought us home again

the response of man to God
and God to man
united and fulfilled
forever in the Lamb

and when we don’t know what to pray
Jesus is praying
that we may know the truth
our freedom is in Him

Hey! I finally worked out how to add my twitter widget to the blog. I have been tweeting for a couple of weeks now and think I am finally getting the hang of it. You can keep up with all the tweets through twitter.com. Just look me up, it’s at NessaKersting (http://twitter.com/NessaKersting) and I will try to keep you posted on all that is happening.

This should be a lot of fun. Are you planning to come???

I’ve been sitting here trying to think of what would be a good first blog. There is SO much to write about. Though as i sit here and write the stories on the bushfires in Victoria are on the news. SO much devastation and heartache it is hard to even find the words to write anything.

The above is one of my favourite pictures from the last couple of weeks, as it shows vulnerability, inspiration and hope. People looking after not only each other, but also creation and wildlife.

Sometimes there are no words, nothing that can touch the deep pain and grief of those effected by the fires but we can pray.

Jesus, the Father and the Spirit know the best ways to hug those grieving, and to give hope in the most hopeless of situations. Some people ask where is Christ….?? My answer right in the middle of this despair, mess and heartache, wiping tears, holding broken hearts together, providing glimpses of hope and joy like in the photo above.

We may not always have the right words, but we do get a chance to participate with Him in all He is doing everyday. Including helping a vulnerable koala who is tired and thirsty.