I Wish These Words Were Mine Sometimes...

O LORD,
No day of my life has passed that has not proved me guilty in thy sight.
Prayers have been uttered from a prayerless heart;
Praise has been often praiseless sound;
My best services are filthy rags.
Blessed Jesus, let me find a covert in thy appeasing wounds.
Though my sins rise to heaven thy merits soar above them;
Though unrighteousness weighs me down to hell,
              thy righteousness exalts me to thy throne.
All things in me call for my rejection,
All thing in thee plead my acceptance.
I appeal from the throne of perfect justice
              to thy throne of boundless grace.
Grant me to hear thy voice assuring me:
              that by thy stripes I am healed,
              that thou wast bruised for my iniquities,
              that thou hast been made sin for me
              that I might be righteous in thee,
              that my grievous sins, my manifold sins, are all forgiven,
                     buried in the ocean of they concealing blood.
I am guilty, but pardoned,
        lost, but saved,
        wandering, but found,
        sinning, but cleansed.
Give me perpetual broken-heartedness,
Keep me always clinging to thy cross,
Flood me every moment with descending grace,
Open to me the springs of divine knowledge,
          sparkling like crystal,
          flowing clear and unsullied
               through my wilderness of life.

-- "The Broken Heart",  The Valley of Vision, Puritan Prayers

Night

Black grass, smoldering eyes, 
Dancing in the fields, inhibitions in the stars, 
Far away and distant, free and careless, 
More alive with each breath than ever before. 

The stars make their ladles and their belts, 
And through my fingers they seem so close, 
Yet as the planes cut the sky, 
Suddenly, the world is small. 

Claustrophobia takes captive my heart, 
And I feel like I'm bursting at the seams,
Contentment in the simple sky, 
The world seems safe in this lone moment. 

Night has taken over my heart, 
And I would stay forever here, 
Because never have I seen such beauty, 
And never, have I felt so loved.

The Way of Progress

City lights take over the rural soul, 
Eating the history and swallowing it whole, 
Gulping it down like foul-tasting medicine, 
Until there is nothing left of how things used to be. 

There is nothing left of how things used to be. 

Concrete fills the veins of the roots beneath, 
Murder, from the inside out, of a once live creation, 
Then they put machines over top of the nature, 
And they call it "progress". 

There is nothing left of how things used to be. 

They flock to their handiwork like bees to honey, 
Praising themselves for a job well done, 
Until there is no life outside the walls of this city. 
Only more walls, built in the name of betterment.

There is nothing left of how things used to be. 

They are not alive, 
They are part of a world against living.
They are part of a world that promotes death
In the most painful way possible -- separation. 

There is nothing left. 

Liturgy

I am no longer my own, but Yours. 

Use me as You choose, 

rank me alongside whoever You choose;

put me to doing, put me to suffering;

let me be employed for You, or laid aside for You, 

raised up for You, or brought low for You;

let me be full, let me be empty;

let me have all things, let me have nothing; 

with my whole heart I freely choose to yield 

all things to Your ordering and approval. 

So now, God of glory, 

Father, Son and Holy Spirit, 

You are mine, and I am Your own. 

So be it. 

And the covenant which I have made on earth, 

let it be ratified in heaven. 

Amen. 

-- From the Valley of Vision Puritan Prayers

In The Summer

In the summer
we used to take our mason jars
with the holes in the lids,
down to the bog
where we'd chase the lights
that flew in the night,
catching them, one by one.

We ran through the mud,
the grass and the moss,
with our shoes that lit up
whenever you took a step.
And we ignored the streetlights,
and all our mosquito bites,
because they marked the time to go home.

With our chubby fingers
and our starry eyes,
we searched for more
than what we could learn in books.
Imagination, of a different kind,
an opening, of a creative mind,
we wanted more, more, more.

In the summer
we claimed what was ours,
with a young tenacity
and an innocent strength.
And even when our mother's called,
and our nightly adventures were quickly stalled,
we were still children.

We were children.

Playing God

I have adopted

whatever looks similar 

to a concrete conclusion, 

because answers, 

no matter how inaccurate, 

are better than nothing. 

Right?

You have played this out
like a mad-libs game,
with "insert the name of God"
written under every blank space.
Because that's the only way
you can make sense of things.
Right?

And I have written

my own ending 

to this never-ending-story, 

because you already have, 

and I think it's only fair 

that I get the last word.

Right?

Wrong. 

Because we have both failed

in our attempt to be wise, 

to realize that we don't know the end. 

And you can say that you do 

until the cows and the pigs fly, 

but you don't. 

I'm sorry but you just don't. 

My My

My my, what we have here
is a no-good, no-win, mess.
And I'm grasping at straws
tripping over what was, what wasn't,
and frankly, what will never be.
We have so much to rehash
relive, remember, regret,
and so much to leave behind.

I just can't see what the end will look like.
Can you?