The Prodigal’s Black Box

The matter lost
In the slow concussion
Gentle and steadfast
At the rate of age
And inevitably sure
Is that gravity leaves
A downturn In
The arc of your high
Fireball trajectory
Surely a light against
The sky burned bright
Then out leaving soil
In a barren field scarred
With ashes and debris
To reflect another
Light that still lands
Upon the consequences
Of lessons unlearned
Inadequacy unconfessed
And peace unfound
Tired of feeding pigs, yet
You never made it home

Reaction (a stream of consciousness poem)

The focus of our time
That which steals the purpose
The substance that could be our reaction
To something divine
Outside our realm of understanding
But fully capable
With infinite potential
To create beyond the scope of our conception
Life abundant
Through grace incomprehensible
Prompting us
If we will let It
To overflow with foolishness
For that is what it is in comparison
To the scales – the units of measure
By which humanity has limited itself
Irrational
God and everything outside of ourselves
Outside of self
Our attention focused on the other
Our attention and time and energy
Spent outside of ourselves
Is equivalent I believe
To Love
To God
To worship God is to let our attention
Let our limitations
Let our reactions and our fear
Loose
Free to run away
and in doing so
Freeing us to trust and place
Our hope
Our time
Our hands
Our feet
Directly on the path that He has drawn out
To reveal His glory through
To love others
To serve others
To focus your attention outside
Of ourselves
Is to love God
To worship God
To touch the heart of Jesus
And to remove ourselves
From our own grip
With which we cling so tightly
To sin and the death
The absence of life
That it brings
Lord teach me in each moment
Of each day going forward to
Look outside of myself
To let go of myself
To release my fear
And grab Your hand
As it is extended out to me
Each day in need
Empty my hands
Oh Lord
So that I am free to react
To focus my attention
To spend my time
Outside of myself
Outside of sin
But, in You
In Love

Spent

Like canvas stretched tightly over the frame
Imposing upon each gessoed fiber strain

Constitution’s vulnerabilities
Raked and now exposed for the world to seize

Endless hours spent chasing carrot tails
While stuttering words and accruing fails

Squandering away these precious few hours
Tasked to preserve the substance of flowers

Regardless the cost for vain veneers paid
I find my own dignity worn and splayed

With all cupboards bare
The absence clear shows
I have nothing more
To give from behind doors that only close

To Cover Your Crime

I arrived at the vanishing point just to find myself
dancing around it
I wear the scars of the evil you turned into me then
as perspective
They lent a fist of confidence to the humility
From which I flew
The seeds of perversion you planted
Never took root
The fiftieth chapter of Genesis sings my life song
Verse twenty dawn
While this still mourning light lets me not see far past my feet
His blazing pace
Sure relieves my burden and directs me through what I can’t
Yet understand
On toward that place where I will at once fall down at His feet
Full with His grace

Providence (in spite of me)

I am a mountain that has seen the sun
Baking the escarpment broken open
By seismic shifts I had no defense for
Revealing light-less depths I’d never known

I’m a mountain that bore greenery from
Fertile hillside blessed by shaded rainfall
Balanced with ample sunlight to bring forth
Nature’s rich bounty spilling o’er the edge

From the west to the east and peak to ground
I rise up from valleys on every side
Equally akin to death’s deep shadow
As lush pastures of green by still waters

The breadth of my marked ascent is defined
Not by claiming to be a victim but
By recognizing the transparency
Through which He intended me to be

Identity revealed through my frailty
Humility through inability
Bore a mountain solid from within me
His blood covering every flaw you see

So let not my words cause you to stumble
Where I’ve been is not where I planned to be
But He who shaped each atom of the earth
Can mine precious gems from the abyss
To reflect His light for eternity

No Matter

Though unseen by the casual
Observer
The tether of reality
Tightens its
Grip more on a lone anxious hope
Leaving less
Room to breathe ‘tween blanket and sheet
Unsettled
I recite words sincere to You
Desperate
For a few minutes of sound sleep
Praying still
For enough passion to steady
My gaze on
Just the ground lit by the lamp
At my feet
So that I may at last throw this
Gauntlet down
Knowing that just this lack of strength
Is the key
To ensuring Your victory
Over the
Burden of my arrogance
Set me free