We are all here alone
Empty hands and broken hearts.
Standing side by side
We are infinitely apart.
Through the brief window of night,
This solitary life, lost in the darkness
Of unknowing and unknown,
One star interrupts in starkness,
But all who believe will follow
Urged by simplicity or cleverness;
Inhabiting the same space
Doesn’t equate with togetherness,
But by starlight we can better see
Each other exposed, uncovered.
Drawing nearer to the Centrality
Pulls us closer to each other
As a child, that star was miraculous
But my weak frame now understands
In our immiscible sin, it’s a miracle
When we clasp hands.

What he did to her was wrong

And so she ran so very far away
That nothing could ever make it right
Now, too late, she regrets the day
Weeping bitter regrets for taking flight

For cutting off their unfinished song.

She pelted him with needs

Until he was happy to let her go
To build a simple life inside the breach
But the purpose he was made to know
Stayed forever out of reach

Half-a-century later, the day still bleeds.

What was kindled at the Christmas tree
Culminated into Calvary
The Perfect, The Unbroken Prince,
Knelt under the grief of brokenness
And through decades of blood and sweat
Suffered, and gave it all, paying our debt.
Sometimes a rich man, for reasons he knows,
Will pay the foolish debt another man owes
But what rich man would be beaten and die
To ransom his enemy’s son from the pig sty?

In all of human history, only This Man
Left abundance so great
To fulfill His Father’s plan
To sow a seed of Love into the heart that hates

And the harvest still produces.

It’s hard not to notice
God’s paradoxical bricks
In the wall of history
Today’s two sticks
To rub together:
John the Baptist was conceived
As a mouthpiece of God
The Voice, in arms received
By a priestly mediator,
A first-time father, a man
Silenced by doubting
But according to plan

Named his son
By His Father.

Doubting conceived
Silent waiting
Which stretched and birthed,
With his wisdom abating,
The hope eternal
Of God’s sure Word.
Once confessed,
He was again heard,

And his son’s voice
Still echoes.

It sounds like my mother
Is saying goodbye
Maybe to manipulate,
In order to try
To pull me across states
In more ways than one
Or maybe she knows
Her methods are done
They no longer pay
Like they used to do
But now she’s alone,
Now she’s burned through
Her natural resources.

My heart is pierced for her.
I can’t bear how this may end
But I have no means to help
And she requires it to bend

Until it breaks.

Ripples frozen
In an otherwise still lake
Light refracting
In undulating waves
Like Aurora Borealis
Captured on an ice canvas
By a Celestial Painter.

The eagles are back.
I watch them soar
And these days of waiting
Mean so much more
Thank You, God
For bringing me through
Hours too painful to breathe in
Betrayals and untruths
The raptors stately perch
Their keen eye trained
I’ve seen these seasons change
Die away, but what remains

Is Your steadfast love.

And those who watch for their Groom

Soar.

I am Yours
I yield to Your hand,
To Your plan, to all
I can’t know or understand
But to my capacity,
I know You.

It’s all Yours,
But for my part,
If I can offer it,
Have my hands, my heart,

My hope, my trust, how I live
My days and years and collisions:
Whatever is mine to give

Is Yours.

I see You better again,
And eight-twenty-eight
All things work for good.
Your plan is worth the wait.

I’m sorry I lost patience
And the delights of faith.

I don’t need it all here, and
These might be my last days
Still mottled with sin
Grief drenching in waves

But beyond how darkness feels,
What can be broken or destroyed,
Is the perpetual light and joy
Of the land I cannot avoid

At the end of this passage
The destination of You:

The Father of Lights.

Forgive my anger
All this past year.
I wasn’t that well
Shaken by fear
Though you assured
I stopped coming to serve
But to be served
In ways I don’t deserve.

In both affection
And dire need
I clenched knuckles
Too white to bleed
Around a people
And a place
That were Yours, not mine.
I didn’t seek Your face

I sought Your benefits.

Help me start again
Wherever that may be,
Remembering what I am
In modest humility.

Deliver us from evil.