Gethsemanean Dirt

Whatever it had once been, it was now merely dirt— one small sampling of decayed life, groaning after glory— and not the marble men require for the tread of kings. It lay where it fell, gave its last strength to the olive, took the weight and kicks of common feet. And when the Lord came— […]

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Your Light Arises

Far away the wings of morning lingered long in darkened hall. Wreathed in murky gloom the promise just beyond our reach and call. Then a shaft of God-borne sunlight, Morning star where night had fled broke the bounds of death and darkness Christ has risen from the dead! – CHORUS: See our death and darkness […]

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Why?

Why did He die hanging there against the sky? The evil witness stood and lied, Peter swore, and trice denied. Why did Jesus die? – Why was He torn for crimes He never once had worn? The crush and pierce of razor thorns He bore amid the sins and scorns. Why was Jesus torn? – […]

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A Prayer for Grace

Oh, Lord, please strip the darkness from the night; and dull the blade of bitter-sworded wrongs and pulverize the teeth of terror’s bite and mend the wounded heart with Heaven’s songs. Scrub off despair from where the hope burnt out and lift away a thousand pounds of loss and clear the grey from riddled days […]

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Fallen Sky

Oh to see the sun as once it shone in splendor glorious, ancient as the age, the regal glint reflected from on high in clouds of white: a pure and perfect stage – Oh to hear the songs that once were sung: the trilling notes of brass and wood and string— the echoes soaring skyward […]

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What Christ Can Do

Look what Christ can do— bound as He was to a cross, weary and strangled in pain, a joke on the lips of man, a curse on the lips of God— death of the Immortal. He died like no one else— the pride of the Father’s eyes, a portal torn in the veil from Satan’s […]

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The Hands of Christ

He had the hands of a man,

grown from curled-up baby hands

to dirty, in-a-hurry boy hands

to hands that could wield

a hammer and nails;

hands obscured for thirty years

in seas of Jewish hands;

revealed—man-defying Teacher hands,

hands that could hold

and shelter and bleed;

hands, nearer with every breath,

to nail-intruded hands,

to weighed-with-the-sins-of-the-world hands,

the hands still moving,

washing dirt from feet.

His hands are the hands of God,

blameless, righteous, holy hands,

the died-and-lives-forever hands,

the hands that welcome

sinners into life.

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The Glasses

When man first came to be and watched from out the windows of his eyes the shifting world about he saw the shine of sunlight on the waves and perceived, invisible, the rushing brush that bowed the trees, he knew the richness of his world and loved it. – When man first turned his mind […]

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A Pantoum

I thought that I was finished—I was wrong. A Headache night, a little sleep, a hurried day. Classes never ended, a week that lasted long— Waiting eagerly to eat and drink and play. A headache night, a little sleep, a hurried day Became my accepted practice all the time. Waiting eagerly to eat and drink […]

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