Sandra Elizabeth Daylily

(“Do Not Be Afraid, Mary,
You Have Found Favor with God”) *

Ah, I have
glimpsed you, before
overnight you
disappear into the
hill country of
Judea, as if
your essence could
ever possibly
be ephemeral,
as if your beauty and
the fruit of your
womb, Jesus, could
ever fear!

Sisters

(“Lord, Don’t You Care That My Sister
Has Left Me to Do All the Work by Myself?”) *

O’, bumblebee,
engrossed and enveloped
as you are,
captured in this
split-second beatific
vision of the core
of Beauty, are
you like Martha,
busy and bustling,
or rather like Mary – seated
rapt in listening at
the font and foot of the
Teacher’s lips, His
words pouring forth,
pollinating and
bathing, Martha the
moments missing, Mary
them in her heart
saving…?

Psalm 23:2

(“He Leadeth Me beside the Still Waters”)

From what “still waters”
did this face wash the sleep
out of its eyes? What
“Pool of Siloam” was found, *
whence a daylily could
find forgiveness, and in raising
its head up from fresh
dewdrops – know its beauty
was no longer blind?

Confessing

I was too tired to pray,
so all I could barely whisper was
to ask Jesus to recite my
prayer for me, the very same
Jesus Who was being
scourged and abused at the pillar,
crowned with vicious thorns,
dragged cruelly through
screaming passageways to
Calvary, and then nailed
with filthy Roman spikes to a
Cross, and in the last
throes of His agony crying out,
“My God, my God, why
did You abandon me?”^*
Yes, that is the same Jesus
Whom I implored to recite the
words for me…because I
was too tired to stay awake and in
self-centered pity to pray.

Grace

O my Lord,
You so easily peer into
my heart, winding Your way
deftly and knowingly through the darkened
corridors and staircases
and recesses of my soul –
and alas You find
me, on a slab in a drab
burial cloth, hidden
behind a hewn rock hitherto
unrolled – but just as in
the Garden of Eden when
You found Adam and Eve in leaves
aft their fall clothed, and
just as for Lazarus in
Bethany four-days aft his
death be told, You mercifully
summoned me forth,
and grace’s white raiment You
chose I wore.