Saul, still breathing murderous threats against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, that, if he should find any men or women who belonged to the Way, he might bring them back to Jerusalem in chains. On his journey, as he was nearing Damascus, a light from the sky suddenly flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” He said, “Who are you, sir?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Now get up and go into the city and you will be told what you must do.”
When I am breathing murder
and fury fills my days,
shine out, O Christ, and curb me!
Disturb my vivid ways!
Let light form heaven blind me
where sight has led me wrong.
O, let my darkness guide me,
my weakness make me strong.
My vision gone, give insight:
Illuminate my heart.
Then I will sing at midnight
and praise you in the dark.
Let not the morning free me:
Delay the great sunrise
until I learn to see you
and scales fall from my eyes.
O Christ, whom I had hated,
you looked on me with love,
and I, when you've remade me,
will tell the world thereof.
For you have seen my blindness
and given me new sight,
repaid my hate with kindness,
and made my darkness bright.
“Why do you persecute me?”
a voice from somewhere sounds;
unsettling and unsoothing,
a blinding light surrounds.
Lord, bring us to that moment,
confounding all we know,
renewing us in conscience:
our own Damascus road.
We cannot know our blindness
while we have eyes to see,
the depths of our unkindness
'til we are in the deeps.
Let mercy's waves wash o'er us;
from death we may yet rise
and seek the light before us
as scales fall from our eyes.
The men and women shackled
in chains that we have forged,
the children left abandoned:
Help us to free them, Lord.
For they are you, O Savior,
imprisoned by our ways.
Come blind our hearts to hatred
to see your endless day.
Good teacher, I have kept the law,
been faithful from my youth:
Shall I then enter heaven's doors
and dwell in endless truth?
Or is there something lacking yet,
some law left unfulfilled,
some measure that I have not met
in all that God has willed?
I honor all my kith and kin;
unstintingly I tithe,
but shall I ever enter in
and have eternal life?
I see no loathing in your eyes,
no judgment on your part—
No, but I feel the answ'ring fires
that kindle in my heart.
Have I been missing, all these years,
what God would have me do?
I met the standard of my fears,
but never yet met you.
Then call me on to something else—
my strength cannot avail—
and draw me closer to yourself,
though all my steps may fail.
And though I stumble on the way
as I had not before,
yet, Teacher, call me still, I pray
to seek you ever more.
The dust of all the earth,
the centuries of grime
could never to such things give birth
as come from my own mind.
From there, as in good ground,
the seeds of evil grow,
and in my heart the roots are found
of every sin I know.
They ripen and come forth,
the fruits of my own hands,
and other seedlings, in their course,
in other hearts they plant.
Come, sower of good seed,
and make this field your own.
Come, plant a different seed in me
from any I have known.
And let it bear your fruit:
Send sunlight and send rain.
Come, Christ the savior, Christ the root,
and grow in me your grain.
So what comes forth from me
shall be the fruit of love,
of Love himself, who sows the seeds
and reaps the grain thereof.
A clean heart create for me, God; renew within me a steadfast spirit. Do not drive me from before your face, nor take from me your holy spirit. Restore to me the gladness of your salvation; uphold me with a willing spirit.
Create in me a heart made clean,
a place swept bare by desert winds,
where nothing but the truth is seen
and glaring sun can bleach my sins.
Give me that strength of spirit, Lord,
to stand yet steadfast in the sun
and feel the heat upon me poured,
and still to stand, and not to run.
I cannot make myself at all—
Lord, make yourself a place in me.
Let it be clean, though poor and small:
You said the clean of heart would see,
and I would see you, if I might,
and know you, though I know naught else.
Though in the glare I lose my sight
and in your gaze I lose myself,
still make a space for you in me,
and I shall have salvation's joys.
Give me your eyes that I may see;
give me your ears to hear your voice.
I could not see, so great the light
that struck me down upon the road,
as all-concealing as the night
but—oh! What mysteries it showed!
They bore me to Damascus, then,
and I was stone within their hands
that someday must be flesh again,
or else it shatters when it lands.
Stone deaf to all but light's clear voice
that called my name and spoke its own—
a sound to make my heart rejoice
if it were flesh instead of stone—
stark blind because I saw too much,
in darkness then I watched for days
'til Ananias' trembling touch
restored the ordinary rays.
And when the scales fell from my eyes,
the millstones fell from 'round my neck.
In water as in light baptized,
stone bent its knees to genuflect.
The stone that mowed poor Stephen down:
that stone am I, the least of all,
but in the silence, stones cry out,
and in our darkness, light will fall.
Kate Bluett 