Tag Archives: Jesus

Treasure 2,3,4

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Exodus 19:5 KJV

[5] Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine:

Deuteronomy 7:6 KJV

[6] For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.

Deuteronomy 14:2 KJV

[2] For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God, and the Lord hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are upon the earth.

These three calling out verses are similar in many ways. God calls us. We are supposed to listen to His voice. If we do listen we are considered by Him (and often others) as special or peculiar.

Special sounds good, but peculiar can raise some eyebrows. Peculiar is different, not like the others, marked out.

We might not want all that, but it is what it means to be God’s treasure.

He tells us we are his valuable prizes, and we, as the valued prizes, do what he tells us to do,

No matter what

Treasure 1

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Genesis 43:23 KJV

[23] And he said, Peace be to you, fear not: your God, and the God of your father, hath given you treasure in your sacks: I had your money. And he brought Simeon out unto them.

Joseph was sold as a slave by his brothers. He was not their treasure. He was, at some point, so despised by them that they would have killed him. They went to great pains to get rid of him, and then let’s face it–life as a slave was no picnic for Joseph. He had so many days of servitude, imprisonment, and darkness. All because his brothers did not see he was treasure.

The similarity between Joseph and Jesus is strong and intentional. Many of us are like Joseph’s brothers, just trying to get Jesus out of the picture so we don’t have to deal with him, all while he has willingly taken on our enslavement, our imprisonments, our being left for dead.

And yet Joseph restores. He gives both life and treasure to his brothers when they had deprived him of his own

In the same way Jesus does, turning rejection into blessing the moment we realize

We can’t live without him.

Eternal Sea

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When I wrote the slim, hasty, typo-ridden memoir Just, I used pseudonyms.

I chose to link my adopted children’s pseudonyms to their first initials C became Sea,

Sea like the color of his eyes

Sea like the cold ocean we stood in together

Sea like the depths, the hidden things both beautiful and terrible, the bigness of it all

Sea, placeholder for the God who makes seas then makes them evanesce

C is lost to me for now. He has disowned both me and the God who made me

But I can still remember

The time you hit your mouth on the hard metal of the seesaw and we had to rush you to the dentist

The way we would wait until you were sleeping to exclaim over your cuteness because

Most times when you were awake there was both sturm und drang

The time we went to the shore and I carried you on my back and you pummeled my head all the way back to the car

If I had a dollar for every time you hurt me or someone else I love dearly

It would not begin to be as much as you are worth

Of your eternal value

Of the Light you can become forever

If you just

Turn and face the Sea.

All hat, no cattle

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I once did a series of poems called the calvarium poems. I called them that. They remain in a kind of womblike obscurity, you could say the poems were like children

If only an ordinary person like me could

Cast a spell with words

Hocus pocus–live!

Abracadabra–live!

I alternate between believing

That the dry bones are the children tossed away from their mothers, their doctors, their strangers holding signs and vigil across the street from the alien clinics, iron bars on windows, misleading titles, security guards and not enough imminently visible heartbreak over this or

The people, the-all-of-us, too craven to save their little, perfect, amazing

Calvariums.

You say the sweetest things

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You say the sweetest things

A soft answer turns away wrath

Love is always patient

What if you took the terrible letters of a curse of sorts

One you never willed and controlled and made it into an acrostic or a cypher-

The letters are a-b-I-r-r-t-u-w

What if that were a word by itself

And you-like the fairy godmother you resemble in rounded form only

No power only soft and aging

No longer the princess or the sleeper or the magic one

Just this one last spell-

Let the word when spoken

Set us free from past and illusion

Let it be the strange, scary truth of the thing-

Oh fragile love-

You say the sweetest things

She calls him

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Revelation 19:16 NIV

[16] On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written:

king of kings and lord of lords.

She calls him King of Heaven. I like that

Evoke the way you effortlessly possess

The sky, the clouds, rolled up One Day for something new. I want to gather these flocks of clouds, the silvery colors of this matchless afternoon

Wonder what is written on you

Wonder what you will write forever

On me

Mark me

Mark me out as your own

This Little Girl

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I want to say so many things to

This man who does not really see

“This little girl”

But I know You

See her, see me, see them

All the little ones who

Need a God like You

Take my sins away, heal my wounds, stay until I am well, bring justice in your wings, never blame the victim, never stop searching for treasure

You

who were, who are, who always will be

Just You,

and “this little girl”