Lost and wounded, weary, worn.
Nor forgotten. Not forlorn.
In the breaking, hope is born
Fresh and new.
Feeling shattered. Feeling shorn.
Stretched past limits; still untorn.
Mercy meets the ones who mourn
Like the dew.
Poetry
Monday Evening
Potatoes baking in the oven.
The smell—oil and earth commingled—
seasons the air, circulated
by the unit’s fan, its white noise drowning
the quiet, though the quiet is still felt.
I am alone here.
I recall the doctrines, that you
are ever present, ever with me.
Why then can I not feel you,
hear you, smell you, detect you
somehow in the room?
The silence seems stronger sometimes.
But truth is truth, even when
perception challenges reality.
Photo by Jordan Graff on Unsplash
A Lament
I cannot find the words to share my grief.
I sit instead in silence, and I mourn
Those dreams that were conceived but never born.
I pray for rest, for respite, for relief.
Remind me of the gospel’s grand motif:
Light for the lost and hope for the forlorn.
This all is grace, the flower and the thorn.
Lord, I believe, but help my unbelief.
I am a broken soul haunted by fears
With naught to offer but these feeble prayers
For hope and help to trust you through the tears.
With glory soon revealed, no pain compares,
So I cling now to you, the God who hears.
O Father, comfort me in these affairs.
Photo by TOMOKO UJI on Unsplash
It Came to Pass
It came to pass:
A simple phrase
So full of hope.
The seasons change.
What now is wrong
Will be made right.
Like flow’rs and grass
Are fearful days
And daunting slopes.
Think it not strange
When night seems long.
Soon comes the light.
Photo by Dawid Zawiła on Unsplash
Sadness
My throat grows tight as speech begins to falter.
I work in words but fight to share them now.
Why do things have to change?
My heart burns as I call to mind the Psalter.
Another break is teaching me to bow.
It strikes me now as strange:
Saved twenty years, and still I fear the altar.
I play the victim though I made the vow.
My feelings rearrange.
Grant me the faith to trust your hand to alter
What I desired and planned, and show me how
To praise in the exchange.
Photo by Artem Maltsev on Unsplash
A Prayer During a Pandemic
Death’s shadow looms o’er us, but we fear not,
For with us walks the life, the light, of men,
Sov’reign o’er ev’ry plague, problem, and plot,
Perfect in power, faithful yet again.
You have been with us, will be with us still,
Though days be long and lonely in the land.
We feel the curse. So many are so ill.
God, this is not the future we had planned.
But you are e’er at work, and so we wait.
And we believe (but help our unbelief).
Let faith grow more than worry for our fate.
Let worship be our joy and our relief.
O Lord, you give. O Lord, you take away.
O let your name be blessed by us this day.
Photo by Chris Henry on Unsplash
A Prayer for Reform
I know I ought to be in awe of you,
To walk in holy fear,
For you are far and you are near,
Both present and surpassing all I know.
But as I go,
I often show
Ambivalence or apathy and throw
My heart to fleeting treasures here.
Reform my faith this year
And fill my soul with love for what is true.
Photo by Aleks Dahlberg on Unsplash
Weakness
I do not want this weakness anymore,
This want of strength, this will so rife with lack.
I tire of always falling further back,
Forgetting truths I knew just days before.
Corruption keeps its hold upon my core,
Each fault of mine another little crack,
Each inability a grave attack
In this, the never ending inner war.
But at the end of my ability,
Your grace, sufficient for my ev’ry need,
Reminds me of the testifying host
Of those who grasp their own futility
And trust instead your ev’ry word and deed,
So trials become their joy, the cross their boast.
Photo by Vlad Kutepov on Unsplash
Bittersweet
Knowing God is growing you, refining
Faith in faithfulness, slowly aligning
Heart and head and habit with his beauty.
Deeming discipline a joyful duty.
Knowing too his work is far from finished,
That you are yet still must be diminished,
That the recognition of a reason
May not mark the closing of the season.
The Test
Each present heartache seems to be the worst.
Each test of faith feels fiercer than the last.
Unfounded fears lie shattered in the past,
Yet fear still strikes with strength as at the first.
You start to wonder if you might be cursed
To never have the faith of the steadfast.
You long for constancy but e’er contrast
Your faith with fear, fulfillment with more thirst.
Perhaps the moment’s pain does not intrude
Except to prove the possibility
Of suffering to serve a higher end.
The path of faithfulness does not preclude
The faltering and fallibility
But uses these to lead you to a friend.
as i learn to walk 