Poetry Day - None Other Lamb

I had such a wonderful evening yesterday, I just have to write about it. I got in the car and went to meet up with an older woman from my church. She doesn’t go to my particular service, and so I had never met her before, I just decided that I’d like to meet with someone. So I followed the email directions she sent me and off I went. The plan is that we will read the bible together, but we didn’t actually get to that last night. It was our ‘get-to-know-you evening’, as she called it.

She has attended a Presbyterian seminary in the US, so she likes to talk about theology (not that I have attended seminary, but I have an interest in theology and enjoy talking about it), and she teaches English country dance, as in 17th and 18th century Pride and Prejudice style dance (though including some modern dance also), so we talked about Jane Austen while she played some of her dance music, and she likes to read, so we discussed books and had quite a conversation about the wonder that was George Eliot, and she then brought out a hymn book and showed me that one of her favourite hymns was written by Christina Rossetti, when we were talking about poetry, then we talked about our shared experience of attending a church for a time that sang the Psalter, which she also got out, and the conversation went a bit like “oh, I love 54B”, and “what about 98A”, interspersed with fragments of singing. And we didn’t even get around to me viewing her crochet, because over three hours later I thought I should be going.

I could hardly believe I had come across someone with such a collision of interests. I know we’re all one in the gospel and we don’t have to all be interested in the same thing to be sisters in Christ, and we can learn from and fellowship with people who are different, and finding someone with common interests wasn’t even part of the plan, it was simply a nice bonus, but I do feel like I have been suffering here in Sydney for lack of people to talk to about things I enjoy, so I was quite delighted! I am really looking forward to what is to come.

We are thinking of working through the book of Proverbs, and using Lydia Brownback’s book A Woman’s Wisdom, which should be good (I've posted about some of her other books here in the past).

But for today, here is the poem by Christina Rossetti poem that has become a hymn:

 Picture from Wikimedia Commons.

None Other Lamb

None other Lamb, none other Name,

None other hope in Heav’n or earth or sea,

None other hiding place from guilt and shame,

None beside Thee!

My faith burns low, my hope burns low;

Only my heart’s desire cries out in me

By the deep thunder of its want and woe,

Cries out to Thee.

Lord, Thou art Life, though I be dead;

Love’s fire Thou art, however cold I be:

Nor Heav’n have I, nor place to lay my head,

Nor home, but Thee.