Two Poems

Today I take a Sabbath to reflect on what God is working on in me. So as I try to fight with my wife and dog for some silence, let me present You with a poem I just wrote after experiencing a Lent service at an Episcopal church. After that is a poem I wrote in the waiting room of a doctor's office while waiting to get my routine kidney check. Thanks Lord, for the beauty of the language that You've given me, for the creativity that you routinely display about the world that strikes me as gorgeous, the thoughts that You inspire me to that I find simply beautiful.

POEM I:
THE BEAUTY OF TENSION

Off wooden beam ceilings bounce readings
nervously holy with rolling meaning.
A tightening in the beauty of tension,
between the yes and the yes,
between bowing and relaxation,
of strained continuation till
we’re drawn to the space where the Lord,
the Lord God is one.

And thus being undone,
being like a shamed man flung
in all disgrace between the One
who holds the justice of life and death,
the same One who with every breath
hopes to graciously harbor fear.
The promise of heaven drawn near
despite the reverence from always offending,
of rending ourselves from the unending
wonder in Your balance sincere.

God of covenantal reality,
the God in the paradox, in actuality
the unity. The completeness of all things,
the restoration Your blessing brings
rings in praise and penance, knees bowed,
heads down and hands peacefully high.
The God of the sky, the ashes, the earth,
guarding the grave, giving forth birth.
Both hearing and acting, present now
and afar, in the sound of pews creaking
and the orphans bleak cry,
in organs ascending and the circles beneath
the bare widow’s eyes, empty relief,
on my coldest hands or all hardened hearts.
A beckoning cracking and bounding within
liturgical groans, a Lent filled with sin,
but never escaping the stained glass of men
and forever coming despite separation,
forever longing to lead in salvation.

POEM II:
IN THE WAITING ROOM

Your chatter, loose and enormous,
numerous depths, wondrous heights,
and weight. The chatter of wanderers,
chairs and walls, crammed with aesthetics
competing for the glory of the eye,
while all too softly falls the weight.
While we wait, we grow old,
for our wait if heavy with worry,
and that won't add what nothing can,
yet I know that lest Your hand
be cover we would all kneel, then
all but disappear as we
spill upon each other in breaths of fear.
Here is plenty of explaining and
unexplaining, hands wrung and deals done
and muttered prayers offered lightly.
For pretty pictures, black and white
and unevenly spaced, bring not peace,
but instead the forceful image of it.
Under all such lie the opposite.
Under silent talk lies louder chatter
of many a more weighty matter,
And benaeth this haunting sticky film;
this airy fear of death belies
a still heavier fear of life.

Put Your Feet on the Floor

Lord, You've responded like You always do to my request of a reply. You've given me one straight away, and honestly, it's something old and something new. You are genuinely the greatest teacher ever, and I love to see You fulfill Your Scripture and Your words right in front of me. Over the last 24 hours, I feel like You've been instructing just exactly like Matthew 13:52 says, "Therefore every teacher of the law who has been instructed about the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old." Your instruction has been bring out old understandings and freshening them up with bold, new words and several new ideas.

The best thing was listening to Sister Victoria on a Mars Hill sermon yesterday as she spoke about "Resting in God's Presence." It was a sermon from a year ago, in Mars' Lent series. I listened to most of the rest of those last year, but had never heard this one. Now I know why... You were saving it for me to hear now.

Sister would talk about the Word and then invite everyone to calm down, "put your feet on the floor," and then rest in God. The last part struck me so hard. It was about simply holding things before You as we forge right through the problems. I am guilty of trying to find ways, levers, answers that get me around life's problems. I realized now that You want me to hold those problems in You, as we wade right through the middle of them.

I also was instructed yesterday about salvation. It's not only about me and heaven, or escaping hell. It's about every part of me. Some parts of me are alive and living in Your kingdom, other parts still need to be saved. My mind, my purity, my time, and more are still in need of Your salvation.

So that's what I come before You right now to do. To put my feet flat on the floor, to acknowledge Your love, to hold myself and others worries before You, and to ask for Your salvation come to all our stuff. Rest with us God. Amen.