In the shadows of the garden, I've been hiding in the leaves. If you see, how will you pardon? I am Adam; I am Eve. I am Jonah bound for Tarshish, but the sea brings no relief. I am stiff-necked and hard-hearted, and I'm hanging like a thief.
When you call, how can I answer? I am naked to your sight. Do not look at me, O Master; do not turn on me your eyes. I have loved the works of shadows; I have told the world my lies. All my making is disaster, and I cannot bear your light.
Further to the shadows driven, yet you call me, and I come, and the hands that I have riven still reach out for me with love. Like a Father for his children, you have mercy on our dust. All there is is this forgiveness; this is all there ever was.
Lord, they who trust you stand like heights, unshaken in your strength, but sorrow comes in with the night and rivers burst their banks.
And when the mountains fall like tears, how shall we stand our ground? Amid the locust-eaten years what harvest have we found?
The field, the grain, the wine, the oil, you sent us in their time, and blood and pain and sweat and toil around your gifts were twined.
Now we reach up with empty hands to an unfeeling sky: O, send you blessing on the land! we beg with throats gone dry.
Somewhere there is a table spread by one who knows our need— the goodness of the wine and bread— where we will sit and feast.
And more than bread and more than wine will fill these empty hands. You send your good things in their time: Send peace to us again.
By Floris van Dyck – The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=150586
Summoning them, he began to speak to them in parables, “How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand; that is the end of him. But no one can enter a strong man’s house to plunder his property unless he first ties up the strong man. Then he can plunder the house.” —Mark 3:20-35
A house divided cannot stand: The roof will kiss the floor. When civil war consumes the land, the kingdom stands no more.
Then how shall I, fragmented heart, stand upright on my own? No, I will take my fractured parts and lay them at your throne.
Come, then, O king and conqueror: That strong man bind in me. What plunders me, O plunderer, bind fast, and set me free.
Drive out the demons driving me; the space that's left, come fill. Knit me together, piece by piece, that I may do your will.
Then I shall be your own, O Lord, when I at last am mine, one with the throng before your throne: Your body, and your bride.
Thus says the LORD: When Israel was a child I loved him, out of Egypt I called my son. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, who took them in my arms; I drew them with human cords, with bands of love; I fostered them like one who raises an infant to his cheeks; Yet, though I stooped to feed my child, they did not know that I was their healer. —Hosea 11:1, 3-4
As if the first were not enough— God's boundlessness in Mary's womb— a second miracle was done: Th'eternal made itself a room.
The ever endless love of God within a heart of flesh and blood, the Logos entered human bonds, the loves that draw us heavenward.
The infant on his mother's breast, her eyes upon him filled with love, a father's tender first caress: Himself the wellspring drank thereof.
The friendship of his brothers, then, the service he so oft received, he turned in love to serving them: He washed them and he bid them eat.
Now in his sacred heart reside the many human loves he knew within the ceasless ocean tides of love divine and ever new.
As flowing out and flowing in God's loves and our loves intertwine within the heart that beats in him. He walks these seas to reach our side.
Like Moses in the desert, barefoot before the flame, or Samuel in the temple, I did not know your name. But you knew mine and called it, O God of Abraham: I come now as you draw me to touch the great I Am.
Not to some distant mountain— I would not know the way— yet stones are springing fountains in my mundanest days. I have no mystic vision; no angels fill my sight. You are more deeply hidden, but still I have your light.
Yes, I have walked this desert and fallen in its traps, but guide me, O my shepherd: I have no other map than lines across your body, like veins that show through skin. They lead me to your heartbeat: O, let me enter in.
When Christ came as high priest of the good things that have come to be, passing through the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made by hands, that is, not belonging to this creation, he entered once for all into the sanctuary, not with the blood of goats and calves but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. —Hebrews 9:11-15
God, who made in the beginning light and dark, and earth set spinning, in the center set a tree. Not for punishment of sinning was the fruit of it forbidden, but to wait a greater feast.
Foolish, though, in our impatience, we reached out to take and taste it: We were cast out into dust, from abundance to abasement, ground that drank the blood of Abel. Good and evil broke on us.
We could not reclaim the garden, but there came with us a promise: Outcast we would not remain. So we filled the earth with altars, seeking mervcy with our offerings, healing for our sin and Cain's.
Lambs and goats: Their blood was useless, though by gallons we bestrewed it, soaked again the bloodstained ground. Life poured out for life's renewing: Something more than us must do it. Mercy must itself pour down.
So he came, the Word incarnate, God-with-us in breath and heartbeat, bread of heaven as our feast. Earth he walked becomes an altar; he himself for us he offers. Christ becomes our great high priest.
Now he enters, once forever into that eternal temple, mercy running o'er the brim. Not with blood of bulls of heifers but his own, for our redemption. Healed at last, we enter in. Amen. Alleluia.
The fountain where salvation springs that death could not destroy: From you, the flood shall topple kings and mighty ones despoil. The poor shall taste the feast he brings: the grain, the wine, the oil, but in your heart yet keep these things and pour them out in joy.
Because of you, then, blest are we on whom those waters spilled: Christ Jesus shall the hungry feed and empty he shall fill. Now blest are those who have not seen but who believe him still, and blest are you who have believed the Word would be fulfilled.
For now the desert runs with streams transforming us within, and we can rest in Christ our peace, his pastures cool and dim. So pray for us, that we might see God-with-us, bone and skin, and pray, O Mother—let it be!— that we shall be like him!
Descend, O Spirit: Touch our minds; create our thoughts anew always to seek the just and right, true goodness to pursue. As you are blowing where you will, so let us wander, too, and seek out every space you fill and ever follow you.
Descend, O Spirit: Touch our hearts; be rooted in our souls to heal each weary, wounded part and make the broken whole. And as you played upon the waves, let us play in the world creating messages of grace that show your love unfurled.
Descend, O Spirit: Touch our hands and put your strength in us to labor for our Savior's plans, the kingdom of his love. And as you speak in many tongues that every land has heard, so let us join your endless song in action and in word.
When justice streams from heaven, will it burn or drown the world as in a second flood? Will we have time to run for cover first? The mountains melt like wax before the Lord,
whose truth shall spring up from the tired ground, obliterating what we thought was safe. Was it on rock or sand we built the house? He comes, he comes, the reckoner of days.
For he has heard the wailing of the poor— Weep then, you rich, at your impending doom. He comes to give us each our sure reward, and how can earth not quake when heaven stoops?
Yet all these things will pass and silence fall, and every knee shall bend before his might, but ere he judges, God will stoop still more to mourn the passing of each blameless light.
Unshroud the dead; let him see every face, and tremble, heaven, as he sees who died. Roll back the stones, disturbing every grave, and let him see their hands, their feet, their sides.
O angels, turn your faces; do not look. O six-winged seraphs, hide your flaming eyes. Earth would dissolve in fire if it could, not to be there when its creator cries.
Kate Bluett 