Help Me Learn Your Ways

Help Me Learn Your Ways

“No wisdom, understanding, or advice can stand up against the Lord.” Proverbs 21:30

I suppose it goes without saying, but there is not one of us that wants to lose. We do not attend our children’s tee-ball games and hope they are trounced by the opposite team. Cheerleaders don’t spell out the opposing team’s name at the Homecoming Game. No one watches the Super Bowl hoping their beloved Seahawks go down in defeat. (Having lived in the Northwest for eight and a half years now, I am, by law, required to root for Seattle.)

He Knows

"Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, 'If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him—that she is a sinner.'" Luke 7:39

He knows who you are. You cannot sneak up behind Him. You cannot blindfold Him and say, “Guess who?” You cannot hide your shameful moments; He knows every one of them.

Bursting

Bursting

(“God began to do a good work in you. And I am sure that he will keep on doing it until he has finished it. He will keep on until the day Jesus Christ comes again.” Philippians 1:6)

I.

While your expectations may be bursting,
pain a hammer and your soul its anvil,
the landscape is still flush with living springs,
the quiet stream sings the lullaby your may have forgotten.

While you search for momentary cover, a reminder
of safety, a friendship or another sign that the designs
you imagined are still within sight,
the plight with its vise-grip deadens the colors
you used to plant, presidential roses in a row.

While the numbers decrease, the failures constrict
the fancies you snagged with your singing imagination.

The days snap at you hearing, the morning is a bully
and evening is a tease with its offer of ease until
the day takes it all away again.

What can we say to the invisible agony?
What gain is there in repeating the couplets
out of time
when no one hears them the second, third
fifth or 10^th time the title is announced:
“There is no cure for the atrophied brain”.

So says the pain that strangles the flow
from thought to light, light to dream,
dream to vision, and vision to…

And that, dear concerned friend, is all I remember.

II.

I’ve heard there is a work within me
and I pray it is so. The exterior is flaking,
the colors are fading, the frame is limping
with skeletal burrs.

I’ve heard it will continue, the will and the do,
and I suppose it is true.
But what once was easy, what once was free,
the words that set fire, the crowd that came to see;
these
are memories of days I played the music of the skies
and the came with cousins from hills and plains
to learn the dance and teach it to others.

Today the tune is confusing, my dance steps are ragged,
and a few watch for a day or two
(some, I’m sure who like the tune).
I am not a solo artist.

The tunes which spread town to town
now are only sounds of puzzling origin,
yet, I believe it honest,
the Author is true while I wriggle the same
as I did without the pain.