Tag Archives: Jesus

Way of Life

Faint, I hear on winds of spring,
As little bells whose giggles ring,
Recollections gray of our beginnings
Chiming through to this new morning

And You are new
My Ancient of Days.

How dark those bitter nights
Must have been, dark sights
Broken, jagged childhood delights
Snarling in crooked-toothed fright

And I begged You for death,
O Giver of Life.

How those moments undone
Dissolved one by one
Like snow exposed to a gentle sun
As You held me in a garden

Sweating in fervor
For my redemption.

I glimpsed You lifting
Gold from death’s ashen rift
I waited, in sorrow adrift,
For You to sift

The precious from the worthless,
As You continually do.

I never dreamed this well.
You established me:
Your daughter, a mother, a wife.
I begged for the release of death,
But You gave instead the embrace of life

Giver of every good and perfect gift.


Special Providence

Let today ever be the day
I seek Your face
My sins aplenty remain
Hidden in Your mysterious grace
I am washed clean,
Seated well at the table

In an unearned place.

Let today ever be the day
I walk the winding narrows
Into all the world
Bowing before no Pharoahs,
But kneeling for the least of these.
And if I pass from life to life,

Bear me up with the sparrows.


She Groans

The virgin cried out
In tremors of foreign pains
Gripping her fullness
In throated, desperate strains
She proclaimed her hallelujah
Hunted, she harbored an eternal reign
Struggling through the gift
Bestowing the timeless name
On her wondrous little boy
In blood and water, it remains
Her agonizing cry of triumph.

Tomorrow’s journey
May lead Your humble maidens
Through unknown cries
Our names will fade and
Tears shed will evaporate
Rising to a heaven laden
But majesty shines in mangers
The grave itself gave in
After suffering reached full term
All these pangs, we trust You’ve laid them
In Your eternal treasury

As our hallelujahs.


Interrogative Response

I remember staring
Through the window by my bed
At the great forked tree
Reaching to the skies overhead
Around a taller branch we’d tethered
A thick rope- upon it, a swinging-flyer
Rounded-seat, my father severed
From a massive tire
And I watched the river’s genesis
Through the lush leaves self-aware
In sparkling metamorphosis
And I knew You were there,
Do You remember?
I know You do.

I asked You to be everything to me.


Closed Doors and Open Prayers

I don’t want to take anything from anyone,
Except their idols,
And the years wasted
Tending abandoned temples
In a darkened land,
The shadow proves the sunshine.
I lay in the sensate awareness
As a frangible child
And supine in a puddle
You drown.
Addicts bite
When you touch their stash
Of chemical responses
As graven images
But You led me out,
And taught me to stand.
Men prescribe the wrong medicine;
The true remedy of which
I’m living proof
Is hidden in plain sight:
Bold faith in Your word,
Untethered to the weights
Of human compensations.
Life’s too brief
To preach to gnashing teeth
And hands clasped
Over ears that refuse to hear,
And You lead me out again-
I will not forget
Where I began, why I am here,
All these years after my death
Redeemed by Your kind intention-
Grace as a burning coal
Forcing motion
Enabling no sins, but
Crippled legs learn to stand
Inside their infirmities;
I run to eternity,
And on the way to Jerusalem
I do not pack the household gods.
I strip the altars I find
In the lofty places
Right under Your nose,
Because You’ve tenderly shown
They are foul death to us all.
There’s an organic soil
Cultivating health,
And overlooked by the self-wise,
The self-absorbed, the self-made men
Whose structures pave the soil
They grew out of,
And I don’t fault them all;
I hand them over to their desires,
And Your wisdom.
I strip away these layers…

And what remains?
Fish on a beach.
Sweating alone in a garden.
Sandals road-worn.
A family found.
Moments planted, not hoarded.
Life abundant in micro-units,
And may I follow You-
Lay down my own nets,
Take up my cross,
And pound the earth
With willing feet
Bearing out the gospel
As You did.

If You are willing,
Make us well.
Lead us.
Defend us.
Teach us to resist assault,
Temptation, and inertia,
Stepping forward in intimacy:
A second language
Far from fluent, but framed in affection-
Teach us, Teacher.
We strive to bow the knee
To You alone,

God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.


Dearest Companion

I’m thinking of our timeline-
A million collisions of grace
Affection and loyalty
You showed in the face
Of my unworthiness,

Because my unworthiness
Is curable in Your pierced hands.

My heart brims with gratitude
My Father, my Brother, my Friend
My ever-constant Redeemer
My Betrothed in the end
And Your love letters abound

Every breath You’ve supplied
Is a gift of life
And I am found in this:

Thank you.


Father God

Tiny baby legs
Shuffle by in stampede
Chubby baby cheeks
Giggle with glee
And I laugh out loud
As praise to You,
Who in tender mystery
Formed all things new.

I’m in awe of all You do.


It is Now

He pulled close to us
In creation, forming by delicate hand,
So close His breath filled our lungs.
Mankind learned to stand
Inside His tender proximity.

He pulled close to us
In manger hay and baby skin,
Walking in unbreakable love
Not counting our sin
But for the payment He would make.

He pulls close to us,
The day is nearly here!
As a ship approaches the harbor,
With His Father at the steer,
He stands giddy in the prow.

He is so close,
Radiating joy through all alarms
If I lived ninety years
It would only be falling forward into His arms.


Revelation

“Not that I have already obtained it
or have already become perfect,
but I press on
so that I may lay hold of that
for which also I was laid hold of
by Christ Jesus.
Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet;
but one thing I do:
forgetting what lies behind
and reaching forward to what lies ahead,
I press on toward the goal
for the prize of the upward call of God
in Christ Jesus.
Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude;
and if in anything you have a different attitude,
God will reveal that also to you;”
‭‭Philippians‬ ‭3:12-15‬ ‭NASB‬‬

Your forgiveness flows
In fathomless depths
And I sink below
Brought to breath
By the oxygen of grace;
Washed clean
Where bitterness defaced:
The place unseen.

A sudden turning;
A fresh beginning.
Once burning,
Bleeding, sinning-
Chewing questions
Like shattered glass,
Like broken bastions
Of empires past.

Ocular scales shed to ground,
Questions falling each alone,
Like wilted leaves, soundless
Before Your Holy throne
I tremble and forgive, subdued.
I confess and boldly stand-
Because if faith pleases You,
Let it guide my hand.

My reluctance dissolves
In view of Your glory,
You choose to involve
Blind-me in Your story,
And that will ever be enough
Nay, more than plenty-
I let go; I give up-
I beg You to send me

To love, to serve, to proclaim, to suffer,
For the glory of Your name.

“Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance
and the sin which so easily entangles us,
and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith,
who for the joy set before Him endured the cross,
despising the shame,
and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
‭‭Hebrews‬ ‭12:1-2‬ ‭NASB‬‬

http://bible.com/100/heb.12.1-2.nasb


Least of These

I close my eyes
She appears again, in the haze
Of spent years and separate ways
And tears bent to earth.
Her moment torn open,
But she no longer remains
In the flowing wounds, the stains-
Her broken fragments of being.

I close my eyes,
And they’re ever kneeling
In like condition: healing,
A foreign concept- a mythical beast.
Love, a foreign language,
A muscle rarely-used,
A notion much-abused
And deeply mistrusted.

I close my eyes,
And open my heart in prayer.
You brought me here from there,
And I was too blind to remember the route,
But I remember You,
And the day I learned love was tangible,
Solid, substantial,
And I could receive it,

And I could give.