viewingcamelot

Father, forgive me.

I still struggle when
Acid touches open flesh.
What were You seeing
When You loved to the death?

What were looking into or through?

I want to look like You.
In healing the ear,
In the silence, in forgiveness,
Through sweat and blood and fear

You never spoke death.

An answer finds my soul,
Why I waste words, heaps by hours,
And You did not:
You knew Your words had power;

Mine feel powerless.

Yet You say life and death
Are in the power of the tongue-
Help me believe! Help me sing life
And leave the bitterness of death

Unheralded, unlauded, unsung.

Dry up the bitterness in me.
Spring up a well that is sweet.

I walked amongst a godless company
Treating them like they were Yours.
They didn’t act like You.
They didn’t look like You.
They didn’t pay any respect to You.

It was a foolish thing to do.

Pearls before swine and into the mud,
Torn to pieces with no remorse,
Time passed, but not the wounds
And what should I have expected?
What have I learned?

Never assume the majority is the rarity:

So narrow is the way.

Betrayal only exists
Where you trust relationship.

Expecting the godless to crucify
Prepares you better to love them in their hammers,

Even while you are in your nails.

People can only take
What you don’t give,
They can only break
What you try to protect.

Father, I got them wrong.
I got this wrong.
I got me wrong.

Before pleading for their salvation
I plead my case.
Should I plead for those
Who are soul-cold
In their Pride and Derision,
Their Lawless, Remorseless Ambitions?

Is it harder to love the enemy
You first loved as your friend?

Is there anyone to love
Who doesn’t love themselves more?
Is that why You, Perfect Love,
Loved us first, while still in our sin
Dying to spare, to save, to transform?

If You are going to save them,
Save them immensely.
If You aren’t,
Remember what they did to me.

Help me be able to love again
Without seeing their faces
In the corners of empty spaces
And wincing backwards.

Help me love more wisely
If ever I love again.

How foolish to run home
Where none existed.
What scent was I following?
So strong I persisted

Past all my familiar landmarks.

Was the song I chased,
The echo to the unnamed senses,
Merely the strut of force
Destroying gentle defenses?

Was it their remorseless, ruthless nature
That felt like home?
No one was safe or worthy of trust.

I’d rather take my chances
On the horse I rode in on:
Escape or Bust.

At least now I know better
Than to look for home
Ever again.

Across so many miles,
I swear I heard them.

Some people exist as
Acts of violence
Within themselves
Smoldering defiance
Screaming against
Humble reliance
Saliva streaming in sulfurous flood
Grinding intentions with a pestle hot

But we wrestle not
With flesh and blood.

Suffering:

Because we are
It is.

Because Grace is
He allows us
To BE.

Hope is inextinguishable

Because Jesus is
The Great I Am

The Judge,
The Defender

Love

All things will be concluded
Enveloped
Complete

In Him.

All men are pirates.
Desperately wretched are we;
You are justice.
You loathe piracy.

How do You restrain the flood,
And save the bloodthirsty
At the cost of Your own blood?

Father of Lights,

You’ve shone through the darkness
In brilliance and complexity
Illuminating my poverty, my hiding
In the corners of simplicity
Unable to converse intelligibly
With the paragons of humanity

And Your luminescence is blindingly

Beautiful.

I am nothing.
So small, so dull,
Every time I’ve tried to run the race
I am startled by crowds, I fall
And fall and fall.
Alone, I weep in the crawl

But Your arms pull me tall

You hold me close.

I have accomplished
Nothing. If now, at this late hour
I may still make You proud,
My weakness hidden in Your power,
My fragility transformed
Bloomed like a flower

In Your care, carry me there

Where all things are summed up in You,
Reflecting Your beauty:

You Alone are Beautiful.

In ways I never deserved
You’ve carried me in this place
That feels full of godless people
Devoid of grace
Vandalized by a culture
Of slander and pride:
Warmthless, merciless, truthless-
Moral cowardice draped in lies.
The squirming maggots of sin
Blinding every eye.

If it be to my will,
Help me forgive
Then shake off the dust.
But You Are, thus I live;
Let Your river obediently run.
Take me within Your tide.
Not my will, my God, but Yours be done.
Keep me close beside.
By their self-righteous hands, I died.

In Your love, I forever hide.

Remember the promises You made
To Your humble maid.

I waited…

To eat.
To breathe.
For my inner fractals
Frozen as they grieved
To repeat
To complete
The pattern I believe
Echoes impactful
From first conceived
Cycles indiscrete

Inescapably fated.

Father, You are faithful
Beyond all men
Beyond the lies, the ambitions,
The gnashing agendas

Beyond our sin

In which we die and kill
You have made it possible to save.
Only by Your sacrifice, Your gift
We live; we have no other way-

No road to life but the One You paved.