We Had Been Disarmed

We Had Been Disarmed

(“The Lord's kindness never fails! If he had not been merciful, we would have been destroyed.” Lamentations 3:22)

Maybe the day would bring something better,
maybe the dawn would shine again. Maybe we were
hiding from the love we thought we never deserved.
Is it all too marvelous,
Is it so hard to believe?
And yet our darkness lingers, there is no argument
against that. The cries of the exiles crowd out the
silence, the whisper, the slightest breath of consolation.
We have heard the words before and assumed
they
were for the well-healed and polished words of
prayers that took elegant sweeps around the room.
We could not talk, the pain was so exhausting;
we could not listen, the syllables were still defrosting.

We had no weapons to lay down; we had been disarmed
at the beginning of the conflagration. We had no rhetoric,
our stumbling tongues met our teeth midsentence. We could
connect the deathly groans that echoed from throats strained
from crying. We were grieving more minutes than we were
given in a day.
And yet we still cried out in hopes we were heard.
We threw up the dust and wrapped ourselves in canvas,
hoping the coming day would wash the pain away.
The rains were slow, and we passed the days squeezing
out the splinter of faith that was remained. We were afraid to lose
even that much,
never wanting to hit the bottom where the embers of devotion
would die far away from their source.

Yet there is where we heard again, like the untarnished
coins of another realm. We felt the low vibrations
in the depth of our grief and hope began to open its
failing wings. From the depths we heard the hymn,
though our position had not changed. And we might be called
foolish for trusting a mere toccata while the atmosphere
demanded a dirge.

And so, we listened and considered these things. We counted
the days and the shades, the shadows and the rings that were
made by the same sun that had risen during our better days.
And we knew, though the pain was deep, that somehow, we
were heard and we would not be destroyed. We heard the
refrain of mercy, a kindness that, in short,
never fails.