You speak, Lord, and I listen, words written on my heart; my soul, though, does not quicken, and still my heart is hard. I hear, but I am deaf yet; am blinded, but I see. I am closed off from heaven: Ephphatha! say to me.
How can my eyes be opened to see what you reveal? My stone heart mst be broken so that I may be healed. How can I hear the whisper as heaven's door swings free? As you were pierced for sinners, Ephphatha! say to me.
For you yourself were opened, and you wept floods of tears— so each of us is broken, and I myself am pierced. As you have suffered with me, my sufferings redeem. Let heaven open in me: Ephphatha! say to me.
Will you, O God, look on my days with favor and bless the feeble faithfulness you see with mercy for the thousandth generation, as graces from my forebears came to me?
Will you behold my striving with your kindness and witness all my efforts from above? The consequences of my self-made blindness will you withhold from those I dearly love?
Or will you let the axes I have sharpened, that I let fly, fall earthward as they will? I fear them not, O Lord: My heart is hardened, but how can I not fear that they may kill?
But if you will, reach out your heand from heaven and turn all my destructive ways aside. What I have loosed, bind into your indenture; where I have prisoned, throw the portals wide!
Yet you will not, until the trump has sounded, turn anyone aside from his own sense. Instead you stand, unweaponed love unbounded, and let the axes fall upon yourself.
Lord, I would be a blessing to my children, as I am blessed by those who came before. Then let me bear with patience all that kills me and stand beside you here forevermore.
Thus says the LORD: Shout with joy for Jacob, exult at the head of the nations; proclaim your praise and say: The LORD has delivered his people, the remnant of Israel. Behold, I will bring them back from the land of the north; I will gather them from the ends of the world, with the blind and the lame in their midst, the mothers and those with child; they shall return as an immense throng. They departed in tears, but I will console them and guide them; I will lead them to brooks of water, on a level road, so that none shall stumble. For I am a father to Israel, Ephraim is my first-born. —Jeremiah 31:7-9
The Lord will come, and it will not be long: He comes at last to lead the exiles home— See how they follow him, a joyous throng come singing on a smooth and level road.
He leads them through the parting of the seas: The limping ones, the old, the deaf, the blind, the fearful hearts come after him with ease— All those we thought we had to leave behind.
For we had fallen to the ways of strength, as captives to the powers we desired. How could the feeble walk the desert's length? How would the weak do then what was required?
We did not fathom how the love divine would shrink himself to fit our helplessness; we did not understand our God's design to show his glory in our weaknesses.
But so it was, and it shall be again: Though we have wandered, he will bring us back. We were cast out, but he will lead us in and fill up with himself all that we lack.
Then bring to him your weak and foolish heart; fear not to show what brings you to your knees and say to his, “My child, what do you want?” “O Son of David, Lord, I want to see!”
Kate Bluett 