I told myself I would
Swim the coldest days
Knowing the river runs
Warmer than the air making it
Rise in Holy Ghost waves
I turn to watch the tide
Tell me you remember
Every day you stayed with me
When all the cool kids
Left town
In the end, I picture you
Crossing paths unexpectedly with someone much like me only nicer
Between trains in a crowded station
She is going one way, you the other
And she knows there is only one minute left
Amidst the noise, the crowd, the excruciating sound of braking
To say something
To change the course of your endless
Destination
There is no end of the line?
Who will meet you at the station?
Jesus, the ticket pressed into your hand
The only way home
He walks into every room looking for someone who might comprehend
what it is
he has seen and heard
He weighs their solemn waiting-room-faces
Do they have
Better memories now? Do they still need to write things down or
Know every word by heart?
Are all the lambs among them and
can we see their scars?
Who can end this waiting
By calling us out
Out into life
Around Thanksgiving I got Covid. I work in a doctor’s office, so eventually all of our staff got the disease as did our immediate family.
Symptoms and severity sorted out by age. The youngest two had the mildest symptoms, the oldest–me, ended up in the ER for a day, facing a diagnosis of damage to my heart and lungs.
First, let me say, that I am mending. I am the recipient of miracles and healing.
But the 24 hours leading up to the ER visit were really scary. The day in the ER was a gift. The oxygen machine they sent me home with was a gift.
And my current pulse, O2 stats, and general health–belong to the grace of my Ransomer.
Jesus gave me miracles, as He has done my whole life.
Covid is a really scary disease. It leaves some scars. It leaves fear and memory of the pain and uncertainty.
But Jesus is bigger than mountains. Jesus is bigger than tiny killer viral agents.
And Jesus never walks away from us.
I know I have been saved and given the gift of my life back.
I will do what I can to praise the One who saved me.
And I will use these beautiful lungs to pray for all of us.
That we feel him there with us,
No matter what.
I have been waging a Sisyphean campaign to draw scrutiny to a large business deal.
One of the companies involved has clearly secular goals which are in frank opposition to the stated identity of the other.
The other bears the name of a good friend of mine. My best friend–
It troubles me that in recent years this second company seems to be more concerned with monetary transactions than honoring the name applied to its legal entity.
It is a good reminder for me–if I want to mark my life, my identity, my business, my things, with the name of my Beloved, well
I better make sure
They all really belong to Him
And we both know
He is my best friend, my boss, my king
Savior, Redeemer, Lord
God’s strong right arm.
Revelation 12:17 NIV
[17] Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring—those who keep God’s commands and hold fast their testimony about Jesus.
John 12:2-3 NIV
[2] Here a dinner was given in Jesus’ honor. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. [3] Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
What do you or I know about spikenard? It is named for a place or places, it grows in the Himalayas, it came from afar, a pint would have been a fortune, an amount of almost incomprehensible treasure.
I say almost because Mary knew what she was doing.
The incomprehensible treasure was the Man at the table.
This scene so similar to the earlier one–
Martha served
And Lazarus was at the table
Only we know now, what Mary knew then–
He is the perfume that fills the house
Dead raised to life, his life for mine,
Nothing will ever
Be the same
As you well know, I have been trying to focus on the presence of signifiers–the feral blender noises the dogs make when they are behind the dark door–the way the clouds pool and furl in beautiful splendor–let us say our daily prayers
Swap the signifiers
Killer clouds for beautiful dogs
This savage world/all ripped to pieces
While the light of one ordinary star is enough to
Remind me
Just how good you are
At holding on to me
All the same.
What happened to me, that in a moment of gargantuan hubris, I smudged it out? So what if it lived in the books or the play things? So what if it preferred the damp and closeted nocturne?
The moment before it was a glinty, wriggling alive
Then it was just an undoable regret
A life I should not have taken
We all have them–
Our ghosts, the ones we wish we could
Bring back whole
A parade of The Returned–
Uriah, John the Baptist, Stephen, Joan of Arc
Leaping and unfettered procession
Amidst the boundless sea of
The Redeemed
these trees of life
I could be a quark or an hurtling star,
A duck or a chicken
Living on one side of a beat-up plank fence
With knots in it, and scooped out holes
Signifying they all used to be trees
and the fence and the yard and the girl are just
Another kind of spaceship
Prone to sunset
Nothing can stop the Splendor from breaking through
Every hole in the fence.
John 4:12 KJV
[12] Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle?
I have sat in the noonday sun with these two people for hours here and there over the course of my own friendship with the Man in the story.
He could have just answered her–
Yes!
You betcha!
Absolutely!
But he knows I will be listening, that others will be listening so..
John 4:13-14 KJV
[13] Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: [14] But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.
A person cannot go wrong with living water.
But it is worth noticing the question she asks–
Is Jesus more powerful than Jacob?
Strange to think of all the days when
The hope of Mankind hinge on the Jacobs of history.
When Jesus was coming
The Breaker
The strong right arm of God
The one who makes all other heroes look
Like chumps and losers
Jesus–
Living Water
