80

Lord,

Forget your anger; calm our fears.

Give us life and remember –

Turn and face us; hear our prayers;

See our tears.

Lord,

Turn and face us; please redeem us.

Look and see us, please regard –

Reach and touch us; now restore us

To you.

Lord,

We’re your people, remember now

How you fed us; now sustain us –

Well-dried vine; water us now,

Lord.

Lord,

Please restore us, save us, please

Save, please save, please save, please

Save, turn and face us, please

Save, turn and face us, please

Save, please save, please save, please

Touch and restore us,

To you.

Psalm 80

fenceline

In my backyard there is a
Barbed-wire fence post falling down
To one side; crooked end showing black
On the leaves.
I bow my back there and I
Bring the post back standing up
And hide the crooked end, throwing bark
In the hole.

But I know it won’t stay upright –
There’s no way that it can –
And I really cannot say I care,
Because the fence line
Is broken in places and the pieces
Are still coiled from anger
And draped head-down over
The splitting stakes.

Now,
This is no poetic mistake.
These are my little crowns.
These are my hard-work life halos.
I hung their red-sprinkled spiral
Hollows on those rusted nails
To remind me of gentle Grace
Released to me a long time ago
From a callous grey gallows.
And most often, they do.

But I here admit that
Sometimes still I sit,
And think along that fence line,
Like when the coyote comes through
Now and then to bear away my fine friends,
Or toddlers that look just like mine
Run full toward their drowning.
Then, I am tempted to unwind
Some of that sharp, strict line
And put that wire fence back up,
At least, for a time.

I tell you, now –
It is my hope,
That though I built them not,
Some boundaries remain;
Although I sacrificed not,
Forgiveness and freedom still reign
In the lives of my children –
And in theirs.

This is my hope.
And I feel it is true,
For just beyond me I see
Blackberry briar hedges growing green
Beside a creek bending and flowing fast
In the rain.

The Ten Commandments

We sat in the back seat on the way there - not quite out of Dad's reach. When we got there, there were two long lines stretching from the entrance. We fell into the one on the wrong side of the highway, facing east, just off the shoulder of the west bound lane. As we inched forward, great clouds of summer dust rose up on the other side of the big wooden screen. The folks on the other side were doing what they could to get a good spot.

When we finally made it to the marquee, I thought we were getting close, but we weren't. Then I realized that the dust was starting to settle a bit; that dusk was settling in too. And I realized that, although we had been waiting forever, we still might not make it in time. It seems like I stared at that marquee for hours. Cecile B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments was written in brand new letters and the top part of the sign was whiter and brighter than the bottom section – new bulbs.

We bought tickets from one of the ladies walking to and fro along the gravel drive. When she came up to the window I noticed she was wearing a cotton nail apron with Morrison's Lumber Yard printed in bright red across the front. The apron was just like my dad used back in those days – except hers was new and clean and still kind of flat, like it had been pressed with an iron. It may have been the first time I had ever seen a fresh work apron. By the time I would see them, usually sitting in my spot on the vinyl seat next to Dad or piled with his hammers on the floorboard of the Jimmy, Dad's aprons were dirty and worn. By then, the tie string ends and the inside of the pockets would already be stained with all possible combinations of sweat, tar, and nail rust. Her apron was full of cash, coins, and ticket stubs and looked like it had never held a single handful of sixteen penny nails. We finally made it past the actual ticket booth, but it was really starting to get dark and we were still surrounded on all sides by slow moving family cars.

Suddenly, Dad glanced over his right shoulder, said something to Mom about avoiding the deep ruts, and looped wide to the outside of the half-dozen slow pokes still in front of us. He was a full car-width out in the weeds. Once we cleared the edge of the six-foot tall corrugated metal fence we saw that the theater was packed. Cartoons were over; previews were ending -- the movie was starting.

Once we found an open spot – at this point, the choices were always too close or too far back – Dad pulled up, rolled down his window, quickly pulled the speaker through the window and flipped the volume switch – then we moved on to the next spot. After a few tries, we found a working speaker. Dad turned the car around, got out, rolled down the back window, pulled down the tailgate, hung the speaker on the window, and we settled in to watch the movie. Dad took my brother and me with him to the restroom on the dark side of the concession stand – an off-white cinder-block building in the middle of the drive-in. I won’t try to describe the restroom there, but there was a reason Dad kept telling us to go to the restroom before we left the house. Mom wouldn’t go or take my sister there unless it was an absolute emergency. When we came out of the restroom, we immediately got in line for food. It was hard for me to see the screen while in line, but the sound was actually better right there since they had hung extra car speakers on each corner of the building.

It was a great movie even though it was hard for me to understand why God would kill the Egyptian children just because Yule Brynner had a hard heart. When it was over, there was another mass exodus – not between great walls of seawater, but instead around each side of the giant screen. Most folks stayed until the end; the lines were longer and slower. The westbound traffic ran all the way down Fourth Street into downtown Graham where only a few cars at a time were able to make it through the various traffic lights. It seemed like it took forever for us to just make our way onto the highway.

Although exiting traffic was a real mess, people were on their best behavior – there were no teenagers leaning out of their cars yelling obscenities, the locations of lake parties, or the like. It was not as solemn as a funeral progression, but it was close. Reverence seemed appropriate for such an occasion. After all, we had all just seen staffs turn to serpents, seven plagues come and go, and the Angel of Death pass over a family breaking bread under the blood of a lamb. We had seen God part the Red Sea; had seen Glory in Moses’ face as he drew the people out, and had watched the Law burned into stone while God’s chosen people sculpted a calf of gold.

On the way home, we lay in the back of the station-wagon, half-asleep on the clean thin sheets and comfy pillows that Mom always insisted we take on those rare trips to the Graham Drive-In. Behind and in-front of us, an endless caravan of headlights branched, divided, and branched again. Dads went in the houses first and turned on the porch lights. The stars came out and constellations filled up in the sky. We looked out the windows and counted the other shooting stars on the road home to Newcastle.
______________________

March 8, 2014

Twelve Bulls

They fasted there, at the river Ahava,
They humbled themselves before their
God, to seek from him a safe journey
For themselves, their children,
And all their good things, for
“The hand of our God is for good
on all who seek him,
and the power of his wrath is
against all who forsake him.”

So
They fasted and implored their God
For this, and he listened to their
Entreaty, to give them safe journey
For themselves, their children,
And all the good things, for
“The hand of our God is for good
on all who seek him,
and the power of his wrath is
against all who forsake him.”

The captives escaped;
The exiles returned
And they offered there
Burnt offerings to God;
Twelve bulls for Israel
Ninety-six rams
Seventy-seven lambs
And
A dozen male goats.

They offered
Burnt offerings to God.

For
“The hand of our God is for good
on all who seek him,
and the power of his wrath is
against all who forsake him.”

The captives escaped;
The exiles returned
And they delivered
Messages for God;
Commissions to kings,
And provincial governors –
Beyond the River –
Aid to the people
And
To the house of God.

They delivered
These messages for God.

For
“The hand of our God is for good
on all who seek him,
and the power of his wrath is
against all who forsake him.”

The captives escaped;
The exiles returned
To seek God
By a river.

________________________________

Ezra 8

For God Shows No Partiality

He will render to each one
According to his works
Glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good.
Glory and honor and peace for everyone
The Jew first and also the Greek
Tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil
Tribulation and distress for every human being
The Jew first and also the Greek
But
Glory and honor and peace for everyone
Who does good.
Who does good.
Glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good.

The Jew first and also the Greek
For God shows no partiality.
The Jew first and also the Greek
The Jew first and also the Greek

Eternal life for those who by patience seek in well-doing.
Glory and honor and immortality.
The Jew first and also the Greek
Wrath and fury for those who do not obey the truth
Wrath and fury for those who do not obey –
The Jew first and also the Greek –
But seek themselves and obey
Unrighteousness.
Wrath and fury for those who seek themselves!
For those who do not obey
The truth –
Wrath and fury –
The Jew first and also the Greek -
But
Eternal life for those who seek patiently
In well-doing
In well-doing
For those who seek peace, tranquility
For those who seek life, immortality
For those who seek truth, honor
For those who seek others, glory

The Jew first and also the Greek
For God shows no partiality.
The Jew first and also the Greek
The Jew first and also the Greek
For God shows no partiality.
____________________________________


He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality.
(Romans 2:6-11 ESV)

Prayer for Transparency

I pray that my Heart be made Transparent and my Flesh not veil the Image of the Spirit at work there.  For the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son and, upon divine command, precedes Them into the Chaotic, Unclean and Broken Hearts of his Children.  The Spirit goes there to “prepare a Room” for the Holy Trinity – to build and sanctify within us a Holy of Holies that is accessible to both Man and God and, by virtue of the Atoning Life of Christ, is made available and visible to this Fallen World. From there – from the Seat of Grace and the Fountain of Mercy – springs the Kingdom of Heaven on this Earth. And when our Time is full, and Death has been finally drowned in the Love of Christ, the Lord will make a new Earth, a Blessed and Fruitful Garden Home, where we will dwell and worship with Him beside the River of Life.