Who are You, Lord
That You desire to heal broken men?
Scattered in pieces before their idolatrous altars,
The shards of Your pottery, buried and alone.

Who are You, Lord?
That You desire to heal crushed women?
Trampled like grapes, but their essence gone rancid
Not for new vintage, but to feed to the swine.

We become the very things we would ourselves discard,
Disestablished, Valueless, Replaceable.
But because You are perfect,
You see in all things wholeness and completion.

We are created perfect in Your image
Which is perfection itself. Whole. Complete. Self-sufficient.
Triune beings like You: Mind, Body, Spirit.

But the moment You place us in the earth
We begin to turn sour
Ruined by the evil essence of our own imaginations
Rancid by our own choice, we spit in Your face.

Our building of Babel
Obscures what we can see of You.
Our anthems of aggrandizement
Drown out the songs from Zion.
Our calcified hearts
Crack with stiff resistance.
Our religious spirits
Don’t speak Your language.

Scattered, trampled, ready to be winnowed and burnt, scraped up and trashed
All of which we have done of our own accord.
And yet You wait. You see something in us.
You feel our soil, test it with Your fingers.
When it is ready, You plant according to Your ancient formula.

For You desire only to see Your seed fall on good soil.
Briers, rocks – they are not from You, so why bother?
We see Your 30-fold, 60-fold, 100-fold return in the harvest,
But You see it in Your planting.

This poem was written while I penned my memoir Masterpiece: A Love Story

(Public domain image, Library of Congress)