A Slow Road

A Slow Road

(“Thus Shimei said when he cursed, ‘Get out, get out, you man of bloodshed, and worthless fellow!’” 2 Samuel 16:3)

Watch the sorrow that steps so slowly up the hill,
the Mount called Olive, as he leaves a kingdom behind him,
the sun hiding nearly the entire way behind groves of gnarled
ghosts he passed on the way to banishment. Popularity
once was king; shouts of glory once would ring each time
he returned from battle, every day below his window,
and he wore the crown with a straight back, ruddy complexion
and constant attention to questions he knew he never was tall
enough to answer.

It was family that did him in; the guilt, the anger, the choke that fills
sons and fathers with sin when the words fall short of their target. One son
gone, alive; one son gone and buried. The father-king could not utter a word
without stuttering twice over indecision and pride. “You may return, my son,
my rebellious one. But do not visit me, not at home, not on the throne, it is
enough I still call you by name, my Absalom, my rebellious one.”

With father and without him, rebel sons do what kings should expect.
Now father slumps nearly naked to the peak of the small grove where
he had learned to worship in David’s City; Zion’s hill. He cannot bear
the taunts that throw hell and accusation between each pace, within
the space in his head where, hoping for hope, he hears stumble instead.

Shimei, you speak only what the guilty father knows himself,
his scratching sandals write the sentence with each step, that
his Absalom, his rebellious son, deserves the kingdom he
ruled like no other. Yet his sons were at war, and father
could not change history, could not even the score, and
now walks in the woods where the future King

Will pray forward for the family of rebels who know war
too well. The Mount the call Olive will hear the tears
of the Son, the Beloved Son, weeping over the rebels
we all have become. And, for His Father’s sake (and ours)
lays his life down for His friends, not simply hearing the curse
of a rude subject,
but became the curse Himself, even the curse we cast
at Him we thought banished; and was heaven’s King
instead.