His King had already made his own mysterious pronouncement—
It is finished
The anger flows through my veins, the helplessness of ordinary losses
Nothing like a martyr’s death
And yet in both cases the mysterious sentence hangs over the grief, anger, loss and unanswered questions
It is finished
Until the sky opens wide for each of us in relief or judgment
Hope your name will be changed
Pray your sins will be forgiven
And you will know how
To define both “finished” and “rock”
In his Word,
Ours are not enough
Psalm 22:29-31 KJV [29] All they that be fat upon earth shall eat and worship: all they that go down to the dust shall bow before him: and none can keep alive his own soul. [30] A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation. [31] They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this.
I begin to doubt the integrity of the prayers when there are small words inserted to create distance between the woman herself, the gossamer tendrils of law and mercy, and the gaping maw of life-limiting-six-months.
You knew her, right?
The beautiful love story and the broken loneliness?
The way two old people can alarm their neighbors by arguing in the yard?
The steep front steps?
The cartoonishly lovable cat?
She spoke clearly about the dismay she felt decades ago as she watched her own mother sink
The light is falling which means that as the short blue explosions of light subside, the longer, slower pinks and yellows and reds flood
The sky, the man-made lake, and the little girl who looks with every fiber of her being for Beauty in the form of a Friend
Where is he? Her arms and legs geometric as she peers towards the fence, the friend she has missed, like a lost brother, all these years in exile
Your rod and your staff will comfort me
the bamboo stick fished from the river in her hand as her older sister recounts the story of Aaron (and Moses) casting down a rod only to see if transformed into a snake and a snake that eats the snakes of all who oppose them!
“I wish I could turn a staff into a snake!” She exclaims with envy. As though this were a thing little girls did with prophetic regularity.
I tell her she should aim to just practice treating Jesus like a friend who sticks closer than a brother.
I have been working on something lately that (tragically)
Reminds me of you
It started with the question of how “you” could transmit hope to a distant “stone-age” tribe
What symbols would “you” need to
Stand in for Man
Stand in for Woman
Stand in for child
Stand in for God
Stand in for Pain-Brutality-Disenfranchised-Sorrow
Abandonment. Near total abandonment.
By now you recognize where I am going with this—Substitutionary Atonement
For the lamb, the goat, the chicken, the child, the man, the monster
Living then dying inside the universal symbol for In-all-my-years-of-law-enforcement….
This is what ellipsis is for
All the Williams of Heaven
We will see each other again
And this time you will tell your whole terrible story
Through the Universal Translator
God with us.
Matthew 18:3-7 KJV [3] And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. [4] Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. [5] And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. [6] But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. [7] Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!
Matthew 23:37 KJV [37] O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!
Isaiah 22:22-25 KJV [22] And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder; so he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open. [23] And I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place; and he shall be for a glorious throne to his father’s house. [24] And they shall hang upon him all the glory of his father’s house, the offspring and the issue, all vessels of small quantity, from the vessels of cups, even to all the vessels of flagons. [25] In that day, saith the Lord of hosts, shall the nail that is fastened in the sure place be removed, and be cut down, and fall; and the burden that was upon it shall be cut off: for the Lord hath spoken it.
