Incarnation

~*

It's a sort of reincarnation,

 New Years Eve,

The ritual reset,

A time to rebuild

Having shot our wad

 We penniless paupers 

Come to find our empty pockets

Met by Heaven's Hand

Outstretched

 With the offer 

To Begin Again,

Again

Where our Gideon Hearts faltered

Audacious Grace is given

Where we went left instead of Right

The Way Himself makes a way

Where our bargaining for bad fruit

Betrayed our entire garden

Gethsemane's bloody tears are remembered 

Golgotha is once again brought to bear

Sin, thus silenced,

Is made to stand down, 

And we are rendered 

The chance to stand

This remittance

This rebirth

 This "reincarnation"

Is gifted to us

Lavishly,

Lovingly

By Incarnation

Himself

~*

"I AM The Resurrection and The Life!"

-John 11:25

Gift

+

Graced by this gander

Welcome winged harbingers

Warming winter hearts

+

Reflections

+

For now

That is what we have

We are moons

Reflecting The Light 

of Faraway Day

Into fellow travelers' night...

All of us longing

For Home

+

"Deep darkness will cover the people, but The LORD will rise upon you, His Glory will be seen upon you; The people will come to your light,

and Kings to the brightness of your rising..."

-Isaiah 60:1-3

Hope

+

With David

I Rise

From the dead child's side

I put aside pleas for what is past,

Fix my eyes forward,

And Wait 

For Solomon

To be born...

+

"For there is hope for a tree, if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the shoots of it will not cease nor will they fail."

-Job 14:7

Believe

+

You can close the blinds

Pull the curtains

Seal off every crack and crevice

Disallowing the Light

You can hunker down in this darkness

Impenetrable

Unperturbed

Insisting "There is no Sun!"

Asserting disbelief in its existence

"How can I," you cry, "believe in a Sun

Which burns

Which causes pain

Which dries up entire deserts

Which hides when warmth is needed most

Whose rising impels me to work

Whose setting allows such Night in my life

When I'm desperate for 

and despairing of the Day?"

You can hold tightly

With the tenacious grip of a toddler

To your defiance of a Deity you don't understand

You can get colder and colder

Wrapped in the blanket of your disbelief

Of your denial

Eschewing any possible Good

Benighted by what you see only as bad

Or

You can risk removal

Of your limited lens

Let your finite perspective

Be peeled away

Accept your smallness in the scheme of Things

Your blindness to The Big Picture

Allow the pain through which you peer

Which has muddied your view

Exposure to Heaven's Orb

Which seems to have wounded you

Which is your only hope for healing

The Sun goes on shining

Whether we believe in it or not

Giving Life

To the most massive of planets

The tiniest of mustard seeds

Indifferent to none

Despite what you thought

His Eye is on the solar system

And the sparrow alike

Nothing goes unnoticed,

Escapes His gaze,

Eludes His Love...

In your most honest moments

The ones no one else sees

When the superfluous is swept away

And all that's left is your most primal knowing

You Do Believe in God

You just don't believe that He is Love

or if you do believe that He is Love

You don't believe He loves You

And the pain of such an errant belief

Is too much to bear

So you choose

Instead

The anesthetic of Unbelief

At war within yourself

This belief and unbelief colliding

In which state Peace is an impossibility

Let It Go

Risk the pain

Feel the fear

But allow also for the possibility of Love

Know simply that you do not know

That even, perhaps, you cannot know

Herein lies the key:

You Do Not Have To Know

Only Believe

What you Deep Down Believe

Let in the Light

And all that comes with it

The "Good"

The "Bad"

The Pain

The Healing

Open the blinds

Choose to see

The Sun is shining

Love Is waiting...

Believe

+

"Come, and let us return to the LORD;

For He has torn, but He will heal us;

He has stricken, but He will bind us up...

His going forth is established as the dawn,

He will come to us like healing rain to the earth."

-Hosea 6:1-3

Treasure

+

The treasure I hold

In this earthen vessel

With riches to vast to be told...

... And "Once upon a time" you had eyes to see,

And "Once upon a time" I had eyes to see...

But there is One

Who calls to me

As though from a far off dream

His eyes scan the horizon 

Of a world I am a stranger in

Searching

For

Me...

The paradox of searching and being searched for

Will one day become finding and being found

... Home Again

Treasured

+

Esau's Tears

+

I feel myself to be

among the Damned 

once blessed

now consigned

to live with my choice

my damned

and damning

free will 

But that which is consigned

can it not be bought again?

Put back into the circulation 

of the Living?

How many times did Hosea's hand 

Redeem 

one so far gone 

not even repentant

strange that she was saved 

(may it be said of me 

and may I not cry 

the unanswered tears of Esau 

as he stared at the bottom of his empty bowl

his Birthright 

but a memory)

+

Ashes

+

When all you have left

To offer

Is Ashes

Offer them to The One

Who parlays ashes

Into Amazing Grace

Who brings the Phoenix

Out of the fire

Who In The Beginning

Set the precedent,

Breathing Deity into Dust,

Blowing Dead Bones

Into a Divine Battalion

Man's equity

Allows only

For Ashes to Ashes

Dust to Dust

But God Mercifully turns that math on its ear

Exchanging for our prodigal hearts

Every precious thing in His possession,

All of His Household

With All of His Heart

So Go Ahead,

Lay your ashes on the altar

And see Divine Alchemy

alter Everything

+

"I AM the Resurrection and the Life"

- John 11:25

Bang?

+

The Mystery

Hidden in the hush of Things

Not a Big Bang

But A Still Small Voice

A Let There Be

A Whisper...

If you're quiet

You can hear it

The Secret

of

Everything

+

"In The Beginning

was The Word"

-Genesis 1:1

Checkmate

+

No choice we make

Can checkmate God

We sometimes check

but never checkmate

We are three year olds playing

With The GrandMaster

Who is Always twenty moves ahead

Who knows The End from The Beginning

Who is the Alpha

And Also

The Omega

The Hands which even death could not hold

Will not be tied by our folly

Our failures do not dictate our future

The Author and Finisher will have

The Final Word,

And in The End

It is not our lapses,

Our laughable loyalty,

Our less than admirable actions,

But Love Himself,

Which will

Checkmate.

+

"'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'"

-Jeremiah 29:11

Eden's Eclipse

+

Astounding how one apple

obscured an entire garden

Like how a little moon,

momentarily,

blocked out an entire sun

Our enemy's tactics remain the same:

He doesn't have to eradicate our Edens,

He simply has to fix our focus 

on one piece of bad fruit.

+

"Let us lay aside every weight, 

and that which so easily and cleverly entangles us...

fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith..."

-Hebrews 12: 1, 2

Dark II

"He made darkness His secret hiding place

His canopy around Him was dark waters,

and thick clouds of the skies."

-Psalm 18:11

+

We have a God

Who does not wait

For us to grope our way out of the blackness

Toward some state of elusive "Enlightenment"

Before He deigns

to commune with us...

...No, we have a God

Who, from The Beginning,

Got His Hands dirty,

Forming us from dust...

Who, when we bed down in hell

lays down beside us...

Who, descended to The Pit 

And faced down Death

Unwilling to let go of even the Lowest of the Low...

We have a God

Whose Love goes as deep as our deepest darkness

Who is Light

Yet chooses this darkness as a dwelling place

Because He knew that's where we'd be hiding...

Because He knew

That's precisely

Where we'd need

To Find Him

+

"If I say, 'Surely the darkness shall fall on me'

Even the night shall be light about me;

Indeed, the darkness shall Not hide from You,

But the night shines as the day;

The darkness and the light are both alike to You."

-Psalm 139:11, 12

To Matter or Not To Matter.....

+

The Great Gift

Given Every Human Being

is

Choice

Contrary to what the Talking Heads Du Jour

are doling out,

Peddling from their pie holes these days,

Our lives do not Matter

just because we were pooped out onto the planet;

Mankind has been presented

with the Extraordinary Privilege

of Making our Lives Matter...

...Or Not.

To accept the welfare checks of self-esteem

being written out wholesale,

paid to the order of "Whosoever Will"

from a bank account woefully in the red and desperately overdrawn

Is to abdicate our God Given Freedom

of Earning

and Owning

How we Matter to Mankind,

Is to indulge in unpareleled naivete and ineptitude,

being conned with cubic zirconias

out of the Diamond of our Dignity.

To buy in to vacuous verbiage is to Sell-out,

Is to willfully choose Slavery

to the Fickle and Groundless

And Very Changeable

Dictums of the Day.

In the end, it will be a jury of our peers

Which reviews the resume we leave behind,

Wherein our value to humanity is determined:

Whether or not our lives benefited our fellow-man in any way

Whether our lives made other lives better

Whether our lives

Did indeed

Matter...

...or Not.

+

"This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you, that I have placed before you this day, Life or Death, Blessing or Curses;

Now therefore Choose Life, that you and your descendants may live."

-Deuteronomy 30:19

Emergence

+

Like a Genie in a lamp

An Oak tree in an acorn

A Message in a bottle

I am all of these

Although

To be clear,

He is the Genie

The Oak tree

The Message...

I am only the lamp

the acorn

the bottle,

Rubbed raw

Buried

Broken

So that He may

In the end

Emerge

+

"He died for all, so that all those who live would no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and was raised for their sake."

-2 Corinthians 5:15

Running

+

This Fugitive Futility,

Don't you know?

I AM The Voice from which you run

I AM The Ship on which you steal away

I AM The Fish by which you are swallowed

I AM Shore

Sail your Jonah heart

As far as you can

Into the horizon of your choosing,

You find you run in circles,

Journey ends where it begins

One and the same

God's Global Boundary

Deity's Design

Set in place to safeguard

The Beloved

See in this Planet upon which you've been placed

The metaphor of Me it is meant to be

The Textbook in which you live

This virtual reality

in which you learn

What Is Real

So run if you will

As far as you can

All your running leads back to where it began

Into The Waiting Arms of Omnipresent Omega

Into My Encircling, All Encompassing Embrace

Into the womb of My All-and-In-All Ancient Longing Heart

Which has held you all along

Which you never really left

Anyway

+

"You have hemmed me in, behind and before, and laid Your Hand upon me...Where can I go from Your Spirit?  Or where can I flee from Your Presence?  If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, You are there.  If I take the wings of morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me."

-Psalm 139: 5-10

Ocean

+

You think your mistakes

Greater than My Mercy,

Your lostness

Greater than My Found

Your Grave error

Lies not in missteps and sins

As you suppose,

But in thinking Me bested

by these, your foes

You, Beloved, are the Boat

Carried in the Current of Me...

This River,

Always

and

Ever,

Finds

Home

+

"The Lord your God carried you, and protected you, just as a man carries his son, all along the way which you traveled until you arrived..."

-Deuteronomy 1:31

Hung

+

Even You were suspended

Between Two Places

Feeling the Crucifying Agony

of Duplicity...

...For this too then,

You Died...

Between Heaven and Earth

Wings and Roots

Lift and Landing

Hanging here

In this no-man's-land

Nailed to the cross of my crossroads

My own hand holding the hammer

On the cusp of burial

On the verge of Resurrection,

Hoping in the God

Who Never Forsakes Me

+

"For there is only one God and one Mediator between mankind and God,

The Man Jesus Christ Jesus, Who gave Himself

as a Ransom."

1 Timothy 2:5

Rest II

+

We want to make sense of the Macro

Yet it's like trying to connect the dots in the stars

We draw a few lines from one point of reference to another

Then draw our conclusions based on those scrawls and scribbles

While there are still galaxies of dots undetected

So if our lens is limited

If we cannot zoom out enough to get the full picture

(Of which we have but a vague awareness, at best)

Maybe the answer is to zoom back in

-At least for a moment-

On the Micro

On the diminutive dots we've collected

And use the Micro to understand the Macro...

...Or at least to have faith in the Macro...

To Sometimes

Just Sometimes

Rest our minds

As best we can,

To become

Once Again

Like little children,

To be at peace with the little we know,

And leave the Stars

to Him.

+

"Come to Me, you who labor and are heavily burdened,

I will give you Rest."

-Matthew 11:28

Lost?

+

I'm amazed after all these years of walking this path that I still so often am without bearings.
My inability to "Get it right" is laughable, my propensity toward perplexity, unparalleled.

In the movie "Out of Africa", there is a scene depicting Karen Blixen's journey over unfamiliar territory in which she says to her traveling companion, "I think I may have gotten us lost."
By way of reply, he simply answers,
"God is great, M'sabu."
He then puts his head down,
and goes to sleep.

Maybe it's time for me to have a little more faith in God's greatness
And a little less
In my lostness.

+

"God is great, M'sabu."

Warden

+

Do we cling,

Sometimes,

To prison bars

From Outside the Prison?

Desperate for Freedom

Desperate for The Key

When all that's needed

is for us

to

Let Go

+

"If the Son makes you free,

Then you are Unquestionably

Free."

-John 8:36

Abundance

+

Nerves rubbed raw

By so much non-reality

Here, I am fed

By Flight

By Stillness

By the Ancient

Eternal

Sameness

of Things...

Nerves rubbed raw

Healed

By Raw, Velveteen Beauty

Which Still

And Always

Abounds

+

-e.a.a. 1/28/17

Paradox

+

Closing my eyes

I see

The blinds open

And there

The Solid Form

of what previously

was Shadow...

This Path we navigate

by Paradox

The Way

Wending upstream

Against our pragmatic paddles

Better to Let Go

Lie Down

In the Bottom of these Boats

Better to Let

This Strange Current carry us,

Into the Ocean

Of Alpha and Omega

Into the Beginning

And Into

The End...

+

I Corinthians 13:12

Pendulum

+

Swinging

Back and Forth

hanging by Some Invisible Fulcrum

a Hand Which Holds us

Which keeps time

Right...

Left...

And that too seldom breath-of-a-beat

Between the two

When we find ourselves

Dead Center

And our soul thrills...

The micro-moment

Which marks Home

Where, one day,

When all days are done

When the Pendulum is stilled

We will step

From stopped Time

into Eternity

No more Right

No more Left

No more "This way?"

No more "That way?"

But only

THE Way....

Tick

Tock

Tick

Tock........

+

"Lo, I AM with you Always, even to the end of the age."

-Matthew 28:20

The World in Black and White

+

If we do not find

our Raison d'etre in

Divinity

We will lose it in

Inanity

+

"In Him we live, and move, and have our Being"

-Acts 17:28

It's Time...

"Restore us, O LORD God Almighty,

Make your face shine upon us

that we may be saved."

-Psalm 80:19

+

May 2017 be

A time to be born

A time to plant

A time to heal

A time to build

A time to laugh

A time to dance

A time to gather

A time to embrace

A time to mend

A time to love

and may it especially be,

A time for

Peace

-Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8

+

Peace be with you all,

Happy New Year

~*~