Psalm 139, a paraphrase (vi)

9-10-11

Psalm 139:6
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.

vi

I admit, I am a bit overwhelmed

As I ponder

How completely

You care for me.

I can’t wrap my mind around the

Magnitude

Of these details:

I can’t even get past the fact that You

Care enough

To observe me so minutely,

To study me.

Psalm 139, a paraphrase (v)

9-10-11

Psalm 139:5
Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me.

v

The oddest part is this: You haven’t rifled

through my heart and moved on.

No, You’ve besieged me. Here I thought

I’d have to look for You, to chase You down,

And when I looked out my windows,

You had me completely surrounded.

You’d planned Your campaign,

You were here for the long haul–here to stay.

And I could feel You laying Your hand on me–

For what?

Just to show me Your closeness?

As a fatherly expression of affection?

In benediction? As investiture of power?

Or maybe so I wouldn’t be afraid of Your

Drastic measures to make me Yours.

Psalm 139, a paraphrase (iv)

9-10-11

Psalm 139:4
For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether.

iv

You know me so well that You know

What I will say

Before I say it.

[When others do this, I sometimes find it

Disconcerting--should I be

Comforted when You do it?]

[Do You sit back with pleasure to hear

What You know I will say

And how I will say it?]

Psalm 139, a paraphrase (iii)

9-10-11

Psalm 139:3
Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.

iii

Like diffused light on a cloud-covered day,

You are everywhere around me

Yet springing from no one spot.

You surround what I do

All day long, and at night

Your presence

Is as ubiquitous as the air I breathe.

Like a nurse who has worked with one doctor

For many years,

You are used to the way I do things.

You’re familiar with my

Mode of action–

And You’re comfortable with me.

[Actually, God, I'd like to be comfortable with You that way, too.]

Psalm 139, a paraphrase (ii)

9-10-11

Psalm 139:2
Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off.

ii

You observe me–

As though I were the most important

Person in the world to You,

You are aware of where I am

And what I am doing:

Whether I am sitting down or standing up,

You know it.

And You can tell,

Like good friends can from across the room,

Exactly what I am thinking,

Nuance for nuance better than I know myself

Sometimes. Well, always.

 

Psalm 139, a paraphrase (i)

9-10-11

Psalm 139:1
O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me.

i

Lord God, You have searched me,

Digging deeply down as a miner digs into

His vein of precious metal or as a

Treasure-hunter digs down into his treasure-trove.

Because of this, You know me–

You’ve seen all there is to see.

II Corinthians 1:9-10 and 3:18

Beholding glory

Comfort, trust, sufficiency

God raises the dead

2-8-2011

The spice I bring to mourn the dead . . .

This last portion of the poem deals with the one word that seems to be impossible–hope. Because that is the message of the Resurrection. Hope. Hope for new life that springs from the inside and changes us for eternity. Hope because the One who knew no sin became sin for us so that WE MAY BE MADE THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD IN HIM. That’s hope. And not the wishful-thinking kind. It’s the hang-your-hat-on kind. The lay-your-every-waking-moment-on-the-line kind of hope. Expectation.

I’m standing at the tomb
His tomb
My tomb
Your tomb
Dare I hope to see an angel
Announcing over empty grave-clothes
The Impossible has happened?
Where does my heart,
My death-wounded heart go
to find Your Resurrection?
Like Martha, I believe
You are Who You Are—
God, the Son of God,
The Resurrection and the Life.
Can this belief become
the spice I bring to mourn the dead?
Here is where we dwell:
We dwell with Death—
death of loved-ones, hopes, and dreams
Should I really be
Surprised that You should die?
It’s not ok
But I’m used
To it, to death
There’s always one more tomb.

But Yours is empty
Empty, hollow, vacant—
Incomprehensibly absent
Is the corpse I came to find.
“Because I live, ye shall live also”
Was Your promise,
A promise just as impossible,
Just as improbable—
Teach me to believe!
For now, just help me trust
In You, the One I’ve come to know.
I know You’ll read my message
When I send to You saying,
“Lord, the one You love is sick, is dead.”
You’ll come, e’en though he’s dead,
Because You love him, too.
I’m waiting for the glory of God
Promised by You,
Incomprehensibly impossible.
Hoping, waiting, believing
That You defeated Death.

Come and see . . .

If I show You,
if I show You where he is buried;
if I take that long, slow walk to his tomb again;
if I take that long, slow walk with You—
if we take that walk together, even though he’s four-days dead;
if I show You where he lies decayed,
What then?

______________________________________________________________

Go back and read it again. Slowly. As though it is so hard to express the thought you really want to ask that you have to preface it with several attempts. As though you can hardly get the words out. Because that’s really what you are wondering but it’s very hard to say, to admit that there’s really no hope. To admit that you feel that way.

This third part of the poem deals with the response I have when I put myself into the story being told in John 11 and when I bring the story into my own life. Jesus asks Martha, “Where have you laid him?” and she replies, “Come and see.”

That response makes sense within the moment. That’s what you do when the dearest friend couldn’t make it to the funeral of your brother but makes it to town 4 days later. You show him the grave. Maybe you pick up a bunch of flowers to lay at the grave, too. And you take a pile of tissues or a handkerchief because you know that the mourning is not over. In fact, you know that the grieving has just begun. You know that almost anything can set you off again, calling up memories that make you smile through your tears and wring your heart out through your smiles. You know that your younger sister is grieving deeply, too, and you try to be strong for her sake. One of you must be the sensible one that takes care of the details. But you and she both know that your lives will never be the same again.

But however normal Martha’s response may have been, as I read the story, as I think of the deaths (both physical and emotional) that I have mourned, my response is a bit different than Martha’s and Mary’s. As I find myself in their shoes, in their story and mine, I want to say to Him . . . very slowly . . . and in words that can hardly get past the tears . . . “What then?”

Remembering when God cried . . .

This is the second part in my repost of a previous poem.

Before He took the final steps of His journey to the cross, Jesus had spent a great deal of time teaching His disciples what to expect. But they didn’t get it. Not even when He performed the amazing miracle showcased by John in chapter 11 of his account of Christ’s life on earth, not even when He performed that greatest of all miracles He had performed so far, not even then did they imagine in their wildest dreams what He was trying to tell them. Not even then were they even able to imagine the promise He was making to them. I don’t blame them for their lack of understanding. I have a hard time comprehending it myself–I who have read the whole story and know the ending–I have a hard time comprehending the promise of resurrection when staring hideous DEATH in the face. But Easter calls us to remember. And to remember than right before that amazing miracle which foreshadowed the greatest miracle of all time–right before He changed the fabric of space and time for the grieving family, as He met grief and anguish wreaked by DEATH, Jesus–God Himself–wept. It’s ok to cry.

Resurrection?

Rising from the dead?
Just doesn’t happen
Impossible
So improbable that our minds
Cannot conceive the thought:
“Your brother will rise again.”
“Yes, Lord, someday he will
when life as we know it
comes to an end and
You make all things new.”
“I AM the Resurrection
and the Life,” You reply;
and, though my mind believes,
my heart still cries:
“Lord, if You had been here,
My brother would not have died!”
I cannot help but weep.
And You weep, too—
You, who are Life itself,
Weeping over Death.
I know by Your weeping
that You loved him, too:
that Death can touch Your heart,
divine though You may be.
Perhaps Divinity is wounded
more by Death than is Mortality.
And for this moment,
once again, Death
trumps Victory.
And so we weep together.
What comes next?

“Where have you laid him?”

Approaching the tomb . . .

This is actually a partial re-post of a previous poem, a poem that fits again with the Easter season, especially as we think about the fact that Christ died in our place–He joined us in the death that we all are born into. For those moments on the cross, the ONE WHO KNEW NO SIN BECAME SIN FOR US. And all of the horror and sorrow of death and of the deaths of love and hope and dreams and beauty and righteousness was wrapped up into His dying and the laying Him into His grave. His death has not been the only death to bring sorrow and hopelessness. No, we come face-to-face with death over and over again in our own lives. Easter calls us to remember and to grieve the destruction caused by sin . . . . .

When another one falls,
not falls, but stumbles,
not stumbles, exactly,
but trips, and catching
his façade on a protruding edge,
rips it away for us to see
the things that lie inside—
Death rules again,
And I seem to see
You again, cold and lying
in Your grave enwound with
grave clothes and embalming spices.
I find myself at Your tomb again
Bringing spices, mourning You
Wondering
Was everlasting Life all a Dream?

With deathful Sin triumphant,
standing, gloating, leering,
mocking all our hopes—
now dashed with cold reality—
Who will roll the stone away?

And once the tomb is open,
letting out the stench of death,
exposing to our eyes the
lifeless shell within,
where will we find You?
You are not there, the corpse
that was Your body
cannot now be You—
Your spirit’s gone.
And where You’ve gone
We do not know
And cannot follow.
The memory of You fades
to a dream of something
we thought we had.
But we were mistaken.
What hope is there?

Renewed Youth

November 11, 2010

I just figured out tonight why Psalm 103:5 would need to happen.

I was reading the background Lois Lowry gives for her book Number the Stars in her afterword. She spoke of the courage of the Danish resistance fighters who dared to defy the Nazis in so many ways . . . and of the youth of so many of them. One young man she spoke of was only 21 when he was executed by the Nazis. Young, brave, and idealistic, he wrote a letter to is loved ones asking them not to lament the past that has ended but to work for the future they truly longed for (and needed). So young. So brave!

And it hit me that I have grown old at heart. Afraid to risk, afraid of the pain, afraid that all I’ve done and risked in the past was a mere foolish waste after all. All that pain, that fear, that doubt is crippling. Because when you’re young you know that the risks are there but you haven’t experienced them firsthand. And you tell yourself that you are proceeding in spite of the risks when really you are simply throwing yourself out into the fray as though there are no risks. Because for the young, the risks don’t exist. But when you have experienced the risks, you grow up, you become conscious of the cost, and you grow wary.

And before you realize it, you’ve grown old.

Perhaps you become more strategic, but maybe that’s a nice way of saying you play things safer.

And perhaps that’s why we need God to renew our youth like the eagle’s–so we can launch ourselves out again and take the risks as though they aren’t even there. Because in the real world, the world that matters, the risk of loving others is great, the greatest, but it’s the one ideal that is the most important. Because if we are going to act like God does, we are going to have to love like He does–in spite of the risks. And–like those young, brave, Danish resistance fighters–perhaps even because of them.

 

Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength faileth. Psalm 71:9

Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things: so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s. Psalm 103:5