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.

Gethsemane

(“Not My Will but Your Will Be Done”) *

…Alone now,
suffocatingly alone,
squeezing Jesus’ chest but
soon scourging every inch of His back,
Jesus’ temptation at its most
vulnerable peak,
nothing but the sounds of
His disciples asleep,
critically unable their lids to lift
and eyes open to keep,
the penultimate test of His will,
His followers blending
and fading invisibly into the
utter blackness of
the night, becoming part
of the stark silence
of immense isolation
enclothing Him, no more
Voice from the heavens as at the
rapture of the Baptism
on the Jordan, or when
boomed the Majesty of His
Father at the glorious
Transfiguration on
Mount Tabor, just Jesus’
agonized pleas in a
pool of red in the sweat
of His blood, and the
dawning knowledge His Father
had determined there
would be no remitting of the
nails and terrors of
Golgotha’s morning
Cross…

Cedars

(Matthew 19, John 2)

So this is my Shepherd’s gate,
the entrance to which certainly is not
what I had anticipated — the eyelet of a
needle for a camel to impossibly
navigate! But rather have emerged
the soft colors of gold and green, caught
in the autumn light of an
end-of-afternoon, cedar dream.
And a tear washes my cheek,
overcome by the unmerited, sweet
mercy which grace in beauty has
bathed me! Thus I realize at this very
late hour, was revealed the
delicate veil which gives access to
Cana’s wedding feast and
shaded bower…

Mark 6: 4-6

"And He Was Amazed at Their Unbelief"

His power was powerless, and
Jesus was astounded by their lack of faith,
because all they saw Him as was
a carpenter’s son, someone
who was just like they were, plain,
ordinary and poor, no better,
someone who once worked with
stone and wood, whose family was known
and who for years had shared
cooling waters from the same
Nazareth well, a carpenter’s son,
who had recently started to
actively preach throughout the
countryside, and who was
now more interested in how
a mustard seed could bloom as
a metaphor for God’s eternal
Kingdom, and who when
questioned about the
payment of Roman taxes,
deflected the attempt to trap Him,
saying to remit to Caesar what
belonged to Caesar and to God what
belonged to God…

Luke 8: 43-48

"Who Touched Me?"

Lord, there You are — the
Only-Begotten Son of God,
the Word, the Word Made Flesh,
the Word Incarnate,
the Lamb of God … And
You are veiled behind this small,
metallic, tabernacle door, and
I am alone with You, and
all I have to do is to open the
tabernacle door, not
with a key but with
my heart, or to just lightly
touch the exterior metal, like
the woman with the
chronic bleed once did with
the hem of Your garment — from
whence You felt an
indescribable rush of
Your power into her flesh,
stoppering her bleed
forever, while around You the
crowd continued its
seemingly inexhaustible,
irrepressible press.