I tell
The young man that I have
Fallen a million times
(Felt like it anyway)
A million falls
A million failures
A million times
An arbitrary number
Not as funny as bazillions or gazillions
Arms spread wide to denote the bigness of the thing
God sent His one and only Son
…to fall like this?
Fail like this?
Criminal nailed to a tree?
His falling and my falling, so different
His fall just
To rise to life,
Me in His arms
What if
Words in a bottle were
Worlds in a bottle
What if
You and I
Were strangers in a room
Filled with people
Just as broken as me
What if
There really was
A connection between
Calvary and cavalry
And one could be used
To summon the other
What if you had a child
You loved very much
Who would be raised by
One kind of
Monster or another?
What would you do
To save her?
What would you
Do to bring her Home
?
i love the story of Peter falling into the water.
Oh, wait, that is right–the story of Peter walking on water?
Of all the accounts of Jesus’ miracles, this one most resembles a Mark Wahlberg action movie.
And then Jesus walks out in the middle of a night storm on the sea and they think he is a ghost?
Are you kidding me?!
And then Peter decides that the best way to test the identity of the physics-defying apparition is to get out of the boat and walk to him?
It all feels pretty sci-fi. Until Peter looks down and sees “reality,” panics, and plunges into the pitch-dark stormy water.
There were moments in this story that were both freakishly exhilarating and unnecessarily terrifying.
Jesus does not engineer this event in the lives of Peter and the others simply to give everyone a good fish tale.
He does what he does because he can.
He does what he does because they need to see him the way he really is.
He does what he does because life is scary and dangerous and we all need to know that there is just this one Person who can fish us out of the storm and break the rules of physics to save us.
Think about the time Peter spent in the drink–cold, surrounded by heavy waves, dark, gasping for both life and breath.
Where were the other guys?
Shocked and useless in the boat.
People are wonderful, sometimes gracious creatures, but when it comes to drowning in the darkest storms of life, it is best to keep your eyes pinned on Jesus.
He can do the impossible. And the impossible is what we all need–hope in the storm, life after death…
Walking on water.
when the King arises
He runs to us
These words, weapons, shields
Tokens of splendor
Silver refined in the crucible
(For what is crucible but a fancy word for Cross?)
Gold fired seven
Times this burning
Brighter than the sun
Distill this ghost of a man
Standing close to a lone Word
Strong enough
To call him from the grave
Back to life
never was
All that pretty
Never was
All that good
Never did
Believe in romance
Never will
Leave alone
I have a tennis ball, Gatorade bottle top, and an ailing succulent in front of my house.
For three very different reasons I will need to move them soon. I haven’t yet because I am lazy.
Lazy, and prone to markers in the wind.
Leaves fall and God says I love you.
Rubber bands, hair bands, flossers, and pennies are flotsam God sends to us in the unlikeliest of places–I love you.
Considering that we are puny and mean and He is the God of the infinite universe, His extravagant love notes are bewildering and lovely.
People can be love notes as well. The baby singing in the car, children building sand castles, anyone doing anything brave and true–I love you.
Do you know He loves you? Do you look for signs of Him in the world?
To paraphrase the famous conversation from The Count of Monte Cristo–even if you don’t believe in Him, He believes in you.
The case shocked when it was first reported–a man sought help for his daughter who was being sexually assaulted in a Brooklyn park.
The story began to break into pieces within a week of its appearance. The victim was consenting? The victim had been having sex with her father!?
Ugh.
Most of us are done by this point in the story. Too much creepy.
The young woman refused to “do court” and the charges against all of her sexual partners fell apart.
Which leaves several salient questions–
How safe and child-friendly are parks in Brooklyn?
Why were no lesser charges pursued against any of the principals? Public lewdness? Indecency? Incest?
And last–(the one which concerns me the most) what will become of these people?
Especially the young woman.
The explanation of her behavior includes a life of foster care and group homes, a fundamental disconnection from her biological family–a father who could be called predatory at best.
With no more pieces of a biography than that I would hazard that she has attachment disorder, a syndrome caused by neglect and a lack of attachment bonding in babies and young children.
The question of what happens to the adult victims of attachment disorder plagues me because my adopted children have it.
None of us may want to face what happened in that park that night, but we should all question what will happen to her?
How do you teach a woman her own worth or the value of a father who protects his daughter instead of exploiting her?
And what of the men in this story? Each put a biological function of his anatomy over the last shred of his humanity.
My adopted daughter complains that I am not to be trusted because I judge people for things like this.
I would argue that one can only trust those who are willing to judge these things.
It ain’t love if you don’t keep all the little girls (lost or otherwise)…
Safe
At night
In the parks of Brooklyn.
I am grateful for the rain
On this dry patch of earth
I know the difference between
Accidents and miracles
And wish to thank
The God of ordinary sadness
Who sits next to me
on the sinking-in-the-middle
Patched-with-a-heart
-on-the-back
$35 couch
Willing to abide in the center
Of my vertiginous grief
He says
Take courage
It is I
Do not be afraid
I have a friend who fights. She has brightly colored hand wraps that she uses to protect her hands beneath her boxing gloves.
She bandages each hand so that the knuckle is protected, the wrist and all the space in between.
When I have watched her wrap and unwrap her hands it has reminded me of Jesus.
I think of him as a baby. In the primitive conditions of his arrival, the Bible records his swaddling–wrapped in swaddling clothes, laid in a manger.
Descriptions of ancient infant swaddling talk about cleaning the newborn with oil and salt, then wrapping the child in strips of torn cloth.
Lazarus was swaddled when he emerged from his tomb.
The ancients swaddled their newborns and their dead, wrapping both in the same strips of cloth, washing each for the journey ahead.
The story of Jesus’ anointing at Bethany bears striking resemblance to his washing as a newborn and is a stated preparation for the soon-to-be swaddling of his dead body.
Three days is a long time to wait for a resurrection, four days is even longer. But for many of us 20, 30, or 40 years is how long we have waited for our dead to rise to life.
And if eternity is the span of human existence, then it is also the length of time we must measure each human soul, inside or outside our dark and solitary tombs.
To believe in the resurrection of the dead is to believe in the extreme triumph of Life over death, heaven over hell, good over bad.
To stand at the mouth of the tomb and know that someday each of us will be called to walk out of our tombs into Light.
I see him addressing
An undiluted crowd–
You are the light of the world
We are?
Sheep, maybe
Or chicken (I know my coward heart)
But surely not light
Too strong, too bright, too burning
We must burn on
This Mount of Olives
This Garden of Gethesmane
This history and geography of light poured out in the crushing weight
Upon olives rendering
Oil and salt rubbed on the skin of the newborn child
Anointing a king
The King
Of light
Who holds
Each burning
Coil of a star,
The core of fire within each churning planet
Our ordinary souls
In the palms of his stretched-wide
Hands
Carrying Light 