Blessed be My Rock

Blessed be My Rock

(“The Lord lives, and blessed be my rock, and exalted be my God, the rock of my salvation.” 2 Samuel 22:47)

The earth sings like children hogging the microphone,
Christmas Pageants with four year old Elvises, don’t know,
don’t care, don’t understand why they can’t share alone what
they’ve practiced for months to get right.
The earth sings like joy, perched between planets
parading ‘round the sun, it cannot keep quiet the victory; the
ceremony gladly gets out of hand. Nature sings, angels ring
the chorus with wings furiously scattering light across the vast
tapestry; choirs in harmony like prisms unveiling spectrums
seen and felt.

The skies defy the rainy logic of summer thunder reaching
higher than perception; direction (not up, down, in, out;
about a compass that will not stop whirling) fades and
center stage,
sheer joy rains unhindered from cloudless expanse.
The sky laughs at the mere suggestion that the seen
is all there is to observe. Absorbed, each eye sees a
different sky, each eye is in on the joke, laughing
at the right time, at a time when time runs ungrounded.

Astounded, trees clap their hands, rivers rejoice aloud,
winds dance desert wild, then turn and spin like a barefoot child
through the forests unspilled and leaping. Every living creature
smiles at the sound of the

Rock prefinished and unbegun. The solid ground of invisible delight,
the foundation upon which the universe rests, the location
of

Every trust and every treasure. It is
the eternal conversation of
divine and created which is the echo of In the Beginning
and the epilogue of
So Be It.

Those who see the unseen joy
sing for all the same reasons,
creation began when it was good
and increased its volume when
the cross of wood, nails of iron,
gave way to the invisible power
that raised the rock, dead and cold,
Manifest and Fully, Creation’s Lord and
King.

Please Respond

Please Respond

(“For once you were full of darkness, but now you have light from the Lord. So live as people of light!” Ephesians 5:8)

Did I say something wrong, did I stay too long;
Were my words too pointed, or too blunt. Disappointed,
I text and message and check the results; the electrons which
carry your response are sadly inactive. As I understand it, only two reasons
would cause such a thing: Either we are now buried in the next great ice age,
freezing electronics in their circuits. Or more likely, it is only your shoulder has grown cold,
over something I said wrong or pointed, blunt or (I hesitate to suggest it) but,

Anointed.

My words have stumbled like sandals in the darkness, stubbing table legs and
leaving me with a yelp that woke the dog, then woke my wife, then the children,
then the neighbor’s dogs, then their children, until I was afraid the neighborhood
sounded like the entire fire engine company racing to squelch a fire no one had reported.

My words, mumbled quickly, and impatient to scrutinize your understanding, have
caused fires that consumed nothing, and left others wondering what I meant (the best
of many bent responses), or interpreting my gurgled stubbing, report to your
immediate friends that I am not nearly the gentleman you assume me to be.

The anointing is no longer inspected.

May I suggest something, without appearing innocent and faultless, (well,
I know what I appear like from the glances of the handful who have tickled their ears
or turned away when I wasn’t exactly what they expected); so, far being correct,
or even desiring to correct you, I do want you to

Hear my words, at the very least, without thinking I am…Well, you see, that right there
is the problem. I have no idea what you are thinking because you haven’t done the
second thing I desire.

Hear my words, at the very least, and respond, can we say, within the time it takes
for you to read them twice? “I got your note, and I’ll get back to you” is human and
makes me think the shoulder is not so cold after all. But when I know, you’ve read
my note, and weeks plod across the river and back twice or more, with no electron
lettering on my oh-so intelligent phone’s text display, I am put off, and try to write
another day. Only with weeks between my first and second and next hopeful text,
zeros after zeros are the only reply.

You and I were both in the darkness. We once could say words like daggers.
But, if I’m right, we’re both in the light, and words are medicine that heals us,
and food that transcends our death-clutch on the desire to be right. No, the light
dispenses with taking sides and showing might.

Let me know, won’t you, if I’ve said something wrong, stayed too long,
assumed too much, forgot to bring lunch, shook your hand too soft, hugged your wife
too much, or ignored your dog while it stalked me like its next romantic encounter.

I am worth the failures, but I am better than the false assumptions. Words are our
healers that fill in the damp and ugly places that the darkness fills with silence.

Of Coffee and God's Kingdom

“For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a person is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.” Ephesians 5:5

When we spend all of our time trying to decide who is “in” and who is “out” of heaven, we run a giant risk of interpreting everything in Scripture in that way. So, we turn this passage into a dividing line between who is “saved” and who is not. What if there is the “kingdom of God” means something different than a guaranteed ticket to heaven?

Completely Clean

“The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, ‘Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!’” John 1:29

Some of the television commercials that caught my eye as a child were those amazing detergent ads. They still follow much the same pattern. You see a pair of white pants smeared with green and brown stains; the kind every kid has after a hard day at play outside. Of course, it never occurred to me back then, “Why did Mom and Dad allow their kid to wear his nice white pants to romp around outside in?” Nonetheless, we see the before; messy, and stained, and then the after; nicely laundered without a trace of the previous stain.

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.

Bringing Us Back

“We each must die and disappear like water poured out on the ground. But God doesn’t take our lives. Instead, he figures out ways of bringing us back when we run away.” 2 Samuel 4:14

I had a wonderful conversation with a fellow minister this week, and we found ourselves asking some of the same questions. Though between us I suppose we have over 50 years of evangelical history, we both have discovered a bit of freedom to admit we don’t understand everything about God, including some primary doctrines.

Little I Know

"Little I Know"

(“Just then the men were allowed to recognize him. But when they saw who he was, he disappeared.” Luke 24:31)

How little I know of the smallness,
how narrow my view of the focus
which circles, a bright patch on creation’s dark fabric,
how little I know, and how can I speak
of larger denouements toward at corners of the map
not yet surveyed.

I am like a child unweaned, with a taste for only what I know.
I am a lapchild and know Abba’s face well when held close enough
to see His features, smile and scarred brow; callous and wounded hands.
Most times I know Him well and His voice makes me grin, makes me weep,
makes me remember the sweet in the middle of creation’s sometime
bitter brew.

How little I know of Him complete,
how far His silhouette of profile in the mists,
how little I know of His silence,
how quietly He invites while carnival barkers and
whirligigs drown my hearing.

I am a child who hears with ears accustomed to
timbre and tones named well by others who have offered their opinions.

Let me low and high discover the unwritten that words
are not hidden, that come unbidden before I’ve become
well-tempered tuned.