Fourth Week of Advent: Peace

And then there was peace.

For though the night was far from silent,

It silenced the voice of death.

For the empty tomb and the bloody cross began with one breath,

A child’s, born in a stable.

Peace, peace on earth.

Immanuel, God with us, a humble child.

But the night is dark,

So I hold my candle high.

I hold my candle high,

Because God became flesh and dwelt among us.

So I have something deeper than a battle cry,

I bear the truth that will turn death backwards:

Peace, peace on earth.

And all that is within me aches to join the fight,

To burst behind enemy lines, to free the captives from their curse.

If hope is light and love is sacrifice and joy is blazing,

Then peace is what binds them together,

What strengthens my bones and trains my arms to bend a bow of bronze—

Not to bring war, but to proclaim the victory to those that sit in darkness.

Not to kill but to declare that life has come.

Peace is that voice which says, Whom shall I fear?

For I know that man can harm the body but he cannot touch my soul,

For my God is my rearguard, my fortress, my deliverer.

My God is the God that raised the mountains from the dirt,

Who drew the line between the oceans and the shore,

Who broke open the soil for the mighty oak to burst through,

So peace, peace on earth.

Come, come you weary travelers,

You empty wanderers, come.

For here there is the bread of life, the water that you might never thirst again,

The blood that atones for your sin and the righteousness that bears you forward.

Behold your God.

O afflicted one, storm-tossed and not comforted,

Behold, I will set your stones in antimony,

And lay your foundations with sapphires.

I will make your pinnacles of agate,

Your gates of carbuncles,

And all your walls of precious stones.

All your children shall be taught by the Lord,

And great shall be the peace of your children.

In righteousness you shall be established,;

You shall be far from oppression, for you shall not fear;

And from terror, for it shall not come near you.

Isaiah 54:11-14

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Merry Christmas everyone! 

Third Week of Advent: Joy

Joy came blazing, and I thought it would burn me up,

Because even though I ache in the dark,

My eyes still hurt when the light comes on.

I admit that I was hollow,

Empty of everything but those last few strands that I called hope.

And my heart yearned for a break from the shadowy dusk of loneliness,

But I began to despair that morning would ever break over the peaks.

The sun always rises, and this time, it was blazing.

The ribbon of clouds was rosy and embroidered with golden thread,

And the voice from the depths bellowed, Rejoice. 

And it rattled me to the core of every broken piece that I boasted of,

Every crack became wider, and my doubt shattered,

For dawn had come and it was blazing.

I rejoiced, not because I owned the joy, for it was too hot to touch,

Too bright to behold.

I rejoiced because I was weak and silent, and He that is within me was singing.

Gloria, Gloria, look up, for the Lamb of God is worthy. 

Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel--God is with you. 

My God is here and He is blazing.

Second Week of Advent: Love

All of my pretenses have gone threadbare,

Or perhaps they always were. 

I look down, toward the floor, yearning to lose all of my imperfections,

But all I see there are the rags of the beauty that was never there to start with.

I want a heart that is not spotted, blemished like a rejected lamb,

I want to look there and know full well that I am worthy to be loved,

Yet I am not, and so I put on pretty dresses,

And let my heart skip a beat when someone looks my way,

As if I could somehow make something of these broken pieces,

Something someone would want to win.

But I am not blind to the malformed flaws that paint me a cripple.

My eyes are wide with the knowledge of evil,

Yet I forget that I also hold the knowledge of good.

I am looking for love in a foreign place,

In the wilderness of my fickle heart.

I am a deserter, a thief, a traitor, and a liar.

Who could love me?

I have seen my own love wither and die as the heat of conflict breaks upon it.

I know that it cannot withstand any kind of trial or weather any storm.

It is the kind of love that is drawn in the sand when the day is mild,

But the tide quickly carries it away.

So my heart cannot fathom the love without bounds that I see in front of me,

Like a warrior, like a king, like a lion,

But also like a lover, who longs to behold me.

I am nothing! And yet—

Here I am where all of my pretenses have gone threadbare,

Yet I am not uncovered, for I am wrapped in righteousness freely given.

What is love?

I do not know it, not intimately,

For I have run from it for too long,

But I know this—

It is not earned.

Thank God, it is not earned.

You love me. I know it deeper than I know my own shortcomings

Because I have known it before I was even born,

For there, in the depths of the earth as I was being formed,

I was claimed.

It is true that I was a slave to sin, bound to death by chains my hands had formed,

That I belonged to a brutal master,

And that I was plunging headlong toward destruction.

But I was bought by blood shed two thousand years ago.

This is love, that while I was filthy in sin,

You died. 

For me.

This is no longer a question of how deep, how wide,

Just how endless your love is,

Because there is no limit, there is no end,

There is no brokenness that can tear a way out,

A loophole that you somehow missed,

A last coin that did not make it to my old master,

So that the price was not fully paid,

You did not make a mistake.

So can I call you a liar? Can I make you imperfect?

Surely not.

Therefore when you call me yours,

I am forced to know that it is true.

So when you dress me in your rich robes,

And place upon my head a beautiful crown,

On my finger a ring of promise,

I shall not take them off to replace them again with my rags,

Only to cast them at your feet in worship.

I shall not return again to the blood from which you drew me,

Only shall I remain drenched in your perfection.

I shall not again return to the streets to find cheap love, as if I were not claimed,

Only shall I speak your precious name to the broken.

For I am loved, and I cannot escape it, nor can I ignore it,

For it is blazing like holy fire, and it is consuming me, but I am not afraid,

For your name is mine and even death cannot part us. 

First Week of Advent: Hope

Enter Advent. The countdown to the incarnation of Christ--a season of rest, fulfillment of promises, and great expectation as we celebrate the birth of our King. To celebrate and to keep my focus, I'm going to write a poem each week for each of the themes of advent for the week. This week is Hope. 

My soul is heavy, weighed down by a sadness that seeps through to my bones.

There is a darkness in this world and it is thick as death,

I feel it like a poison that I cannot be rid of, a shroud of pain over we images of God.

There are chains and there are prison cells and there are voices in my head,

And without Him, I am lost.

So, O Israel, I understand your mourning.

How the silence of God must have ached as you labored under the rule of sin,

As you bloodied your hands with sacrifices that were never, never enough

To bear you up to God as perfect and blameless.

You were lost. You prayed for a sword to tear the darkness in two,

When what you really needed torn was the veil that separated you from God.

Did you forget that it is He who turns your darkness into light?

But I understand that, too. For I pray for an answer when the God of the Universe is right here,

As if He weren’t enough of an answer for me.

But I hear the word, whispered through the darkness, from faithful to faithful,

A silver thread stitching starlight into the night:

Hope, hope, hope.

For to you, O Bethlehem, too little to be a clan of Judah, a Ruler will come,

And you, O people walking in darkness, behold, a great light.

There lies your answer, wrapped in linen and lying in a manger,

A Child is born, destined to die, foreknown before the foundation of the world,

Made manifest to rid us of this sin for it cannot overcome Him.

There is a darkness in this world and it is thick as death,

But death has no power, because there is light, and it is driving all the shadows away,

Until the final revelation comes and we are given eyes to see—

Christ above, behind, before, to the left side and the right side, underneath, and within,

Christ alone, for He is marvelous in glory and beautiful in love, and His holiness knows no end.

This is hope. And we bear it in our hearts, just as we bear it in our throats, in our bodies, in our lives.

So, heavy soul aching with the brokenness of the fallen world, look up.

Raise your head, for as these things take place it is not the end,

For your redemption is near, it is coming and it will not delay,

And it is breathtaking as the morning, for the Risen Son will never set,

And in that day hope will no longer be a word, for it will be right in front of us,

The unmistakable Light of the world, speaking out life everlasting.