“Broken” is a trendy word
Which gives us all a pass
To roll like Pollyanna
While blinding through morass!
Who wants to face the music though?
Who wants to buck the throng?
But no matter what your view of things…
We all know something’s wrong.
It’s bigger than we bargained for
It’s deeper than we know
We may whistle in the darkness
But despair is all the show.
There’s tension here with no way out
–play dumb and numb the pain
Or –work your way: ascetic death
No confidence of gain.
I’ll hint a third way pictured.
What if breakthrough gently came?
Though most are blind or working hard,
He still offers all the same (His remedy insane)
It took gargantuan sacrifice.
The work completely done.
The reach from out our system:
A perfect sinless Son.
The clean One came to right us.
No other god could do,
Before we knew our greatest need.
He entered: faithful, True.
To pass on this though it’s shrouded
Is to miss the greatest tie:
That God for man has made the Way.
The rescued testify.
This I wonder, how can any atheist or agnostic explain why human life has any value, even as they may want to hope so? And why is hope even a word, a human instinct, if it all does not matter? There’s tension here… but tension can surprise and birth beautiful things.
Ernest Becker, atheist and social-psychologist said “the plight of moderns is that they are sinners with no word for it” (The denial of Death, p.164)
The plight of God was to make a perfect way for sinners to be safe with Him. “The paradox of the cross is that it insists on highlighting our evil, in order to leave us with absolutely no doubt that whatever we have done, we can be forgiven.” (Becky Pippert, p.129 Stay Salt)
Image: monotype with muddy ink, 26×16″ by Mary Nees
Poem by Mary Nees
I loved your poem Mary. I am currently studying Hosea. Prophecy that vividly illustrates the amazing grace of God toward sinful straying Israel, and by application, to all sinners who turn from their evil ways to a God of abounding love and mercy.
I’m thankful for this life changing knowledge of His grace and mercy.
thank-you for reading and commenting Joni, isn’t it amazing how the Hebrew prophets: different unique voices, different eras do dovetail with these themes? yes vivid, hard to hear sometimes, so humbling, so valuable
Oh, Mary! What a lovely return to your beautiful art and thinking, light-shining mind! So glad that I was able to catch up with your posts again. Your poem is true, and it was good to my soul to read it. We neither glorify the pain, nor do we blithely live as though it were not (that’s bad for both us and those who watch us as “shining believers”). Both are true—our fracture and our restoration—but the only way they are rectified together in conversation and are brought to any kind of active meaning and purpose, is to bear witness to that glorious paradox of which Rebecca Manly Pippert so succinctly described (and you aptly quoted): the paradox of the Cross of Jesus Christ! Sin is the Fracture, the applied blood of Christ to our lives today is the Miracle of Restoration. He is no vain hope, no empty platitude, no remote doctrine! He is Bread and Living Water, bestowing grace and honor and power and glorious life–today and forevermore! I love the art that shows Him penetrating our fractured world (fractured me!) with His Light….just the tip of that cross is hinted at, but we know the picture is moving; it is a truth in beautiful process. All ahead is MORE! So much MORE! 😀
Tamara how wonderful to hear from you! Thank-you for the feedback. I hoped to reach that balance in an economy of words. I think I am living this, and thankful to be able to say it. Truly it’s paradox, and to the mind just insanely true. Bread and living water. Thank-you for your words.