Sabbath Rest

I embrace sin like water and feast on lies

As I lug around this burden of

Rank flesh in the wilderness.

If I am weary, weak, and drowning underneath this weight,

What good is manna, water, blessing?

Show me, take me to a place, a promised land,

Where sin can't touch or taint me.

I can see You speak words over waters at creation.

I can see You overflow in light, a fount of light.

But I cannot see You make a sinner saint.

Grant me faith that I'd believe Your words that I can't see,

Light across my darkness, spread triumphantly.

And in creative, cleansing love ever let me be

Purified once and for all

Washed with water pure,

Just as You've promised me,

As all my sins lie slain beneath

Your feet in bloody victory.

As You have rested, so may I

And at Your cross forever lie.

A Few Thoughts on Dependence

      Summer is so fertile and alive. Soybean fields stretch in green ruffles, corn grows up into a forest, farmers pile hay into beds, and there is green on green all over. Green soybean leaves against green trees and green vines and green bushes and green grass. And all the green and all the crops and all the world hangs on Him who waters “its furrows abundantly, settling its ridges, softening it with showers, and blessing its growth. You crown the year with your bounty; your wagon tracks overflow with abundance. The pastures of the wilderness overflow; the hills gird themselves with joy” (Psalm 65:10-12).

     God is gracious to strip us of the things we use to secure our good. It doesn't always feel like grace. It can feel like panic, like loneliness, like drowning, like “evils have encompassed me beyond number; my iniquities have overtaken me, and I cannot see; they are more than the hairs of my head; my heart fails me” (Psalm 40:12). We cradle high thoughts of ourselves, unwilling to admit our guilt and helplessness. Because we fear being left entirely to Christ and His work, we sing lullabies of lies to quiet our consciences. When I think about my sin, I fear, because I can't fix it or control it. If I am worried, I tell myself the gospel not so that I might believe the truth, but so that I might control my unpleasant emotions. Polluted, I use Him to feel better, and I'm sinning just as much. Nothing I do is good enough to please Him or secure joy for myself. Nothing you do is good enough. We ruin everything, and sin spirals out of control. As I think about my sin, sometimes I want to pull out my hair, and sometimes I want to run outside in the rain and let it pound and sting and clean me. Eventually, we come to the end of ourselves, and there is no where else that we can go but to Christ. (The whole Christian life is a continual coming to the end of ourselves and coming to Christ.) “When iniquities prevail against me, you atone for our transgressions. Blessed is the one you choose and bring near, to dwell in your courts! We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, the holiness of your temple!” (Psalm 65:3-4)

      In every chloroplast, sunbeam, and raindrop, He has wrapped us up in reminders of His goodness and our dependence. And it is the safest, most beautiful thing to hang on Christ who atones for our transgressions, the sin that is too strong for us, that has gone over our heads. He takes that sin and rains down blood instead, blood that is so different from our polluted efforts, pure and sufficient blood that can cleanse our consciences from dead works to serve the living God (Hebrews 9:14). 

 

Paintings, "Landscape at Auvers in the Rain" and "Haystacks Under a Rainy Sky," by Vincent van Gogh, accessed from Wikipedia

The Scapegoat

He laid his heavy hands on you,
and so you went
alone, outside the camp.

I wonder if you stumbled down
a cloudy mount,
for this day's full of clouds,

Cloaks for things we cannot see,
we cannot see.
I wonder, do you live?

And as you roamed that wasted land
or cloudy mount,
did your heart burn for home?

And did you bear my sins away?
My heart recoils
as I smell still crackling fat.

Azazel.

For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. [...]
 And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying,

“This is the covenant that I will make with them

after those days, declares the Lord:

I will put my laws on their hearts,

and write them on their minds,”

then he adds,

“I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”

Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.

Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. (Hebrews 10:1-4, 11-23)

**picture from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:William_Holman_Hunt_-_The_Scapegoat.jpg

Good Friday

I drove by a lake cloaked in fog and imagined a man drowned there. Sometimes doubt cloaks my mind, far heavier than fog, thoughts that You're a miser, a sadist, a tyrant. I like to pick my scabs to the irrational scarring of my skin, blood under my fingernails, bitten low. Perhaps it's the control. Sometimes the sight of my own blood makes me woozy, like the thought of drawing it out with a piercing needle. Maybe that's control too. I want control and I want freedom and the two are like oil and water.

There was a heavy weight on Your shoulders, far heavier than I know. Did it feel like You were drowning when You hung there so, pushing Yourself up, scraping Your raw back against the wood, struggling for a gasp of air, for life, His smile? I will never know it, never bear it. What was it like for you, a free bird, to be bound? As the blood flowed out and Your heart beat frantic, did water gather around Your heart in sacs full and ready to burst? You were thirsty.

On my way home that day it started to rain, the heavy spring way. It was Good Friday. This day, Father, You did not spare Your Son. This day blood rained down from Your forehead and into Your dearest eyes, and there was no one to wipe them for You. This day life poured out of You. This day, like the water and blood that ran freely from Your pierced side, the floodgates of free love ran pure and clean and just, clean wetness running, rushing, as a river from Your open side. This day You spared nothing. This day You gave everything. This day You purchased my freedom; I'm no longer under law but under grace. This day the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. This day is for freedom, for knowledge, for nearness. Keep me in this freedom of knowing; to know You is eternal life.

On a River in a Valley

Morn after morn

the sun comes blood red
over the mount

to the Valley of Trouble,

Muddy and turbid.

Lamb after lamb -

You break its neck, and it breaks your knees

to stand in the land with your hands

Covered in blood of the innocent dead.

The acid stains eat at your peace,

Feast at your peace with God,

and burn up your skin

into festering sores.

What hope is there

for the leprous soul,

the adulterous soul,

the traitor of God?

“Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.”

The blood of the Son flows in rivers of red,

as He drowns in the wrath of God.

His heart is spilling,

Dousing the sinning in

Cleansing blood.

“I AM WILLING!”

He rises and

the Valley of Achor

is a door of Hope.