All Is Not Lost

The waters are rising,
the ship battered and tossed,
but a light is still shining,
and all is not lost.
The thunder that deafens
is the crack of our hearts
that cries out to heaven,
yet all is not lost.

Down on the horizon,
comes a glimmer of sparks:
The gleam of the lighthouse
says all is not lost.
There's light still to guide us,
steer us off of the rocks.
Even here, hope can find us,
and all is not lost.

You walked on the waters
while the little boat rocked.
If you don't calm the surges,
still all is not lost.
The sea is all yours, Lord,
like the rocks and our hearts.
Keep sailing us homeward,
so all is not lost.

Christ walking on the sea, by Amédée Varint – http://www.culture.gouv.fr/GOUPIL/IMAGES/101_Christ_sur_eau.jpg (Gravures et eaux fortes), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4780982

Jonah

From Jonah’s song in the belly of the fish:

From the bottom of the ocean,
from the belly of the deep,
in the current's ceaseless motion
where the roots of mountains sleep,
I am crushed and I am frozen,
tangled up in wrack and weeds.
Hell alone is left below this:
You have cast me in the dea.

Swallowed by a deeper darkness
when the parted waters closed,
I am drowned within the heartbeat
of a mind that won't let go.
Can you hear me still, O Father?
Could your hand reach down so low?
I am buried in these waters;
I am carried where they go.

You who made both light and shadow
wrote your name upon them all;
I could read it if I knew how
somewhere on these prison walls.
So I cry to you—I shout it!—
just a whisper in your halls.
Father, send your mercy down here!
How much deeper will I fall?

The Pistrix, the Sea Monster that swallows Jonah (La Pistrice che ingoia Giona, XIII sec. – Campanile del Duomo di Gaeta) By Sergioizzo – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57892841

Depths

I lift my voice up from the deep,
unknowing if to heav'n it rise,
if you will hear and promise keep
from there, enthroned upon the skies.
I know you slumber not nor sleep,
and naught on earth escapes your eyes.
Then look down, Lord: The drop is steep
to where we sit and raise our cries.

Can any reach from here to there?
Or span th'abyss between us two?
Could any stand upon the air
and, higher than we, reach to you?
None but the Christ, who godhead shares
and yet is feeble, human, too,
could know this deep and damned despair
and still hold to the hope that's true.

Then Christ, when in the depths we cry,
lift up your voice to join with ours.
You who came down to earth to die,
lift up our prayers beyond the stars.
You, son of man, were lifted high
but not so high, Lord, not so far
as would to your own kin deny
your mercy or your bitter scars.