Luke 6:29-30

("If Someone Takes Your Coat,
Let Him Have Your Shirt as Well")

Why would the soldiers
at the foot of His Cross have wanted
to cast lots for His cloak,^*
imprinted with bright-red blood and
sweat and sputum as it was?
It was as if Jesus allowed it,
even at the precipice and point of His
peering over the imminent
cliff of death, that His
one remaining garment be
parted from Him and shared by His
executioners for warmth.

Ode to Jesus

So much of You
is mystery,
so much of You is
Bethlehem stable and
Calvary Cross.

So much of You
is shadow,
so much of You is
Light o’ercoming doubt
of Thomas.

Light

Awe

Lord, there is no
darkness too dark for Your Light.
There is no noise too loud
for Your Silence. There
is only You, and before You
I stand mute.

The Truth

The Light came out of
the darkness, and still comes out.
The darkness could not
restrain the Light, and still cannot.
The Light shone and still
shines, while the darkness
cowers, by the Light made blind.

Light and Hope

Where there is darkness,
there has to be Light, to see it…
Where there is despair,
there has to be Hope, to free it…

Matthew 17: 1-5

"As They Looked on, a Change Came over Him"

Which
one Heaven,
which one Earth,
each’s seeming the
mirror reflection of the other,
each’s image and likeness
and raiment
transfigured as on
Mount Tabor – strikingly
white, blinding the
eyes of those who from the
waters and clouds
the voice of God
heard…

Song of Solomon 2:1

“I Am the Rose of Sharon, and the Lily of the Valleys”

“I have not come to call the
righteous, but sinners to repentance,” ^*
and thus defines the essential
appeal of Jesus, His compassion and
His mercy, and why so many in
the crowds would press around Him,
clutching at His garments,
as if His words were falling
upon good soil in the heretofore
barren desert of their ears,
and multiplying in each their hearts
a Rose of Sharon – beautiful
in hope, and in purity oblivious to
mortal anxieties and fears.