Monthly Archives: March 2017

37

I confess my sin
I’ve toiled in tears and sweat,
Trapped in the fear of men,
How I’ve given myself to fret
Lost watching the show,
Ignoring Your plan
I have stumbled, but know
You’ve taken my hand

And I will not fall.

I commit all to You in patient trust,
Teach me how to walk this way,
Teach me the path of good and just
Lead me to walk as I have prayed
For You are faithful: ever true
In You I live, let me also delight
Show me what good I still may do,
Empower me to do what’s right

In all joy and hope.

I surrender all my grief and rage;
I bow before Your holy throne
You alone have the power to save,
And my humble soul rests in You alone.
I’ve given my last mite;
Take also my riches
So worthless in my sight
Without Your provisions

Of grace and purpose.

I am Yours:
This year, this life,
Forevermore.


I Quit

I said farewell,
To eruption of flame, eddies of smoke,
And the same small hope
Of a moment that’s mine

Taken at everyone’s expense,
And only for me, but safe inside
The cloud of death, safe to hide
Where none will follow.

Resolving to put them away
Is choosing to live, to invest,
And everyone is impressed
Anyone would make that decision.

Today I’m a smoker
With no smoke to inhale,
Engaging in today pales
To quitting.


Promises, Promises

I cannot remember the moment before
My childlike joy was kissed by grief.
You’ve upheld, offering wisdom for relief,
And a kind of peace indwelling the war.

But my senses know no exclusion;
I inhabit the galaxy of each breath:
Every tear an explosion, every pang a death,
Every goodbye yearns the final reunion.

Familial connections in every expression;
Every thought links elbows with its brothers
Fact and facet seamed to the other;
The whole at one with each digression.

Every thread a tapestry, to pull
Pulls on the universal design
Every small string is intertwined
With the foundational cords imperial

I’ve mixed all my cups, what mess is this,
Grief in my joy, and joy in sadness.
Chesterton told me once, tis madness:
Mental activity birthing mental helplessness.

And all these molecules of existence,
Shifting, bending, converting, resolute,
Breathing matter, exchanging fruit,
Bleeding under our rebellious resistance,

Sing along to their Maker’s song
The Great Architect, in Whom
Every detail is sheltered and consumed
And thrives or survives as it belongs

And all these thoughts hang on their axis:
Humble reliance on I Am who never sleeps
Ruthless trust in the promises He keeps,
Putting His word into thought and practice

Meditating on His attributes
Expanding my scope
Taking, as fact, our promised hope,
In all the details it constitutes.

Without this axis, my conscious reels,
It falls out of its orbit, turning
Through the sea of stars still burning,
Into the seeming chaos sin reveals

Into the random, cluttered, complexity of man
The blindness of sin so loudly attests
My mind remains if it but rest
In the Architect’s master plan.

Low, I asked for inclusion, for value;
You gave it. I’m reminded to empty myself,
My only value, my only wealth,
Only ever exists in You.


To Whom

I feel like a failure… I wait
For some voice to speak stay,
Reconsider, reassess:
You belong here.

I know God has spoken over me,
And I am clean, and valuable,
But I fear the worst,
Just malleable because I’m dirt

And mud.

These days sit on me,
I feel, like property, I belong
To all that’s wicked, that throngs
Into depravity.
I’m desperate to lift my head
To be counted with Yours,
But humans keep score
And I’m in the arrears I dread
You see, or scold.
Not worthy, it’s hard
To hold no membership card
To your own household
But I wasn’t born into,
Just glommed onto this way,
This breathtakingly beautiful way
I feel I was made and meant to

Love forever.

Wait patiently, You say,
And so I try,
Though long are the nights,
And early the day
I can do the math;
I put them ill at ease,
But it’s You I hope to please
Am I on the wrong path?
I’m ashamed of myself,
Or myself I shame,
But it’s only in Your name
I stake my wealth.
Silence won’t change
My basic substance
I am what I am, but this
Is what I exchange

To become more like You.

I feel like a failure… I wait
As patiently as a I can,
For You to speak value
On whatever I am.