Category Archives: Praise

Christ Eternal

Amongst the garden, there You made
No senseless, suckling babes,
But man of thought, and heart, and will.
Knowing our path, but walking it still
Alongside our wandering, winding arrogance
Relationship perverted into petulance.

Lifting our faces from self-made mires.
Lifting our nobler senses, our deepest desires,
To gaze at the beauty we discarded.
Standing firm so we are guarded
From the wrath we so justly deserve;
Where we should be punished, You preserve.

Until that burning moment of history
When You became a broken body,
The purest and ultimate sacrifice: God and man;
Your deliverance apportioned before we began,
Before we spurned our gentlest maker, our whole,
And the only true lover of our souls.

How that moment burns and smolders,
Consuming every moment before and after,
Radiating through space, and time,
Overshadowing man’s timeline
With fierce love, and unmatchable passion,
Your very flesh an unbreachable bastion

For Your beloved redeemed.
You call us loved, forgiven, clean
You call us heirs to the throne
We would have overthrown;
We would have destroyed, or subdued,
If we were able to stand before You

On any other ground but the one You laid:
The blood ransom You paid,
The Source of Life dissolving the darkest death,
From inside with one final breath
Exhaled in misery,
And stilled,

and inhaled again in victory.

Ascended again to supremacy
Holiness embodied, paying the penalty
To fulfill the law, to gather Your little ones,
Your enemies turned to daughters and sons,
Into Your beating, burning heart,
To never again be parted,

But joined to You, the Eternal One.


From Before the Foundation

Curtains billowing in the breeze
Like a woman’s cotton dress
Frolicking around her knees;
Currents carried on a cool caress

To soothe the heat of day.

Green life emerging from its death,
The winter-buried clumps of sod;
Decay and rot, smothered breath,
Renewed again by the hand of God,

Working through His appointed seasons.


Let the Redeemed of The Lord Say So

How tremulous are the times,
These smooth faced crimes
We cultivate as pets
Feeding crumbled regrets
Until our hands are stained bare
Our ignorance declares
Our bloodthirsty guilt.
We are born to wilt,
Screaming wild from the womb
Against our descent to the tomb
Fascinated with all that lies beneath,
Sheep with carnivorous teeth
Tearing at the soft flesh
The crave and the thirst enmesh
And each entanglement, syrup sweet
And each digestion, a mortal defeat.
On our mounds of filth, we stand
Making worship, inherently hand in hand,
An abstraction we practice alone
Bowing at our own thrones
Bowing, but never to sit
Playing the king, but unfit
To reign.

You reign
Holy and blameless
Ever shameless
Even against our mess,
This howling failure to confess
And repent, and consent to life.
Taking the enemy for wife
Restoring order to the disjointed
Renewing Your anointed

Who were the worst of the lot.


You Again

So stuck on me
And all I am
Is the static between stations,
White noise vibrations
The matrix between cells,
The void that fell
Between occupied spaces,
Lost and lacking graces,

But for Your face turned to see me.

I make nothing
I offer nothing, I am nothing
But what I’ve always been,
A tiny bundle of blood and sin,
Crying out in the field I’m thrown,
No suckling, no home
Until You cradled me near
You – all I love, and crave, and fear

And betray, and hold dear.

I’m tossed under the night sky
And every burning star
Is a light left on for me,
To guide me home, to see
You still care
Not that I’m impaired,
But that I’m still Yours
You – setting my course

And sustaining the force of my momentum.


Striking Out Colorless

I yield
This flesh that rips like paper,
And weeps at every fold,
Incapable of withstanding
The fire or the cold.

I relent
My stone fist,
Fossilizing life and days,
Poverty and wealth
And my every wicked display.

I kneel
On broken legs,
I offer the wrist to chain,
To live, to live a slave,
To die if You ordain.

I raise the white flag
Over my fortress You’ve laid siege;
I surrender all,
All my Lord, to thee.


A Patch Made in Heaven

It’s raining self-despair outside,
And the clatter on my roof
Of water-damaged words
Sings aloud its sharpened proof
Cracks along the heights of me
Allowing rain passage through

It’s dripping all around me,
And the patter of the sound
Reminds me how I leak,
How I’m at risk to drown,
But I know the roof I lost
Can still, again, be found

So I pray He takes His able hands,
And wraps them around my soul,
To protect me from the coming flood,
To plug up all my holes,
As He has done, time and again,
When rain exacts its toll.


Unpacked

Each new step
Unfolds something better.
The baggage I carry with me:
Love letters.

Even I forget
The strength for new steps
Doesn’t come from amnesia
Or pickled regrets

But active Love
will travel.


The Greater Good

In all my days of wandering,
Wending through water and wood,
For every move I made I
Mustered what courage I could,
Closing my eyes, and holding my breath
Putting foot, by foot, to ground
And while my fear was never lost,
Some little bravery was found.
On the outskirts of each town,
I buried my farewells.
Just enough courage to leave them,
But never enough to tell
And once I left a city,
I cut it from my map,
Because there was never any forward,
If there was ever any back.
All the friends I found along the way,
I left littered on every street,
Because the brave are always advancing,
The brave do not retreat
But each friend spoke into my heart,
And all their words remained,
And all my tiny footfalls
Left the echoed words unchanged.
And every word begged me
To change my wandering ways,
And every time they welcomed me
To make a home- to Stay.
Still I continued headway,
Step, by step, by step,
Until, in shock and wonder,
I found those who could accept
All my failed goodbyes,
And the worst I can be.
Friends who superseded,
Who survived as family.

Now in all my many travels,
And ever did I roam,
Nothing took more courage
Than learning to come home.


All Washed Up

How blessed I’ve been to live this life,
Constant as the ocean swells,
And churns, and ebbs as well
Eroding the sands of time.

What happy collisions I’ve had
Inside these currents
With propellants and deterrents
Who swim alongside.

In these frothy waters,
This soup-bowl of brine,
I’ve breathed the divine
And swallowed the rest.

When these mighty waves of salt
Wash me upon the great white shore,
When I can eat the sands no more,
I will leave behind my shell,

And, oh, the stories it could tell.


Giver of Life

I’m scared to stir the cesspool
But the paralysis of surface tension
Immobilizes the flow of life and
Lends rot and foul to my intentions.

You stirred a pool and troubled waters
Freely healed the one most eager.
My own arms are too short to save.
My fingerfalls are mute and meager.

Be the active voice for me
Plunge Your pure hands into my death
Stir my decay and cleanse my sin
By Your blood, and by Your breath.