Should We Wait for Another?

Should We Wait for Another?

(“Go tell John what you have seen and heard. Blind people see. The lame people walk. People with leprosy are healed. People who could not hear can hear. Dead people are alive again. Poor people hear the good news.” Luke 7:22)

I have had my doubts, my u-turn possibilities;
I have wondered why the sky will not rain when
I am parched and need relief from my recent disabilities.
I wondered about each promise, just like you,
I have sought His solace, questioned his silence too.

Wondering why, at 3 am, someone won’t help me sleep,
or turn these dreams from lame and slipping to strong feet
and mental grip upon the faith I nodded aloud to follow.

I am no prophet, but a quiet shepherd, content to sit upon the hillocks,
the green and yellow moguls of spring or summer. I watch the sheep,
give them water, tend their weak, romp with the strong, and feed the
best fodder before night falls quietly and we gather in the fold.
I would be content to read my book, play pastoral on my mandolin,
and protect the loves, ewes and rams and lambs, upon the spreading
shadows of dawn.

I nodded yes to the Power I knew had every right to my existence,
and yet,
when I needed Authority to rid me of a certain incarceration, subsistence
was my ration.

I have asked the questions, the wonder about inability;
I have pulled God’s hair and turned His head around to see me,
to face me,
to embrace me,
and occasionally be startled by what I saw.

But the sheep have sometimes wondered where the lines were born
that were buried in my brow and cracked beside my eyes. And more
than twice a pair of eyes,
have met me from beneath uncombed wool that, sad before,
a half-dozen years or more,
brightly played like a happy lamb again; and I occasionally
was startled by what I saw.