Speaking The Thoughts That Have No Words

I can’t speak

The words haven’t come

They’re here

Waiting

Searching

…

A different way to think

A different way to speak

A third way

Not violence, not Pacifism

Not a peace, nor war.

 

Persistent in Poison

Authority through blood, 

Confidence through cleansing , 

Endurance through the faithful one,

Encouraged and encouraging through 

Confident enduring encouragement of others,

Awaiting the Day.

But

Persisting in poison, 

No cleansing remains.

Time

If I had the time
to sit and relax,
to float down stream
on an inner tube raft,
to enjoy a pipe on a mid summer's eve,
or to walk with my wife
and from my children take leave...

...I would be a Master of Divine.

Rain

Softly falling
Gently calling

Pitter, patter
Pitter, patter
Dripping Drops
Busyness stops
Pitter, patter
Pitter, patter

If Habbakuk Spoke Today

These are the words which he has heard:

How long, Lord, must I call for help,
but you do not listen?
Or cry out to you, “Violence!”
but you do not save?
Why do you make me look at injustice?
Why do you tolerate wrong doing?
Destruction and violence are before me;
there is strife, and conflict abounds.
Therefore the law is paralyzed,
and justice never prevails.
The wicked hem in the righteous,
so that justice is perverted.

You think it’s bad, you don’t have the eyes to see how bad it is yet.
I am already doing that which you would not believe,
I am raising up corporations, governments and nations,
those godless and greedy Powers of darkness.
They sweep across the whole earth
to seize dwellings not their own,
dehumanizing people as they go,
treating them as fodder to be consumed.
They are neither feared, nor dreaded,
because their lips thread lies both sweet and promising,
These Powers come bent on domination,
using people as a means to their ends.
They fly like a vulture to devour,
their hordes advance like a desert wind,
People willingly bind themselves to the Powers,
succumbing to the deceptions of wealth and power,
and they become prisoners as innumerable as the sand.
The Powers mock the law
and scoff at justice
they laugh at all resistance,
shaming their resistors in the open,
so that people close their ears to cries for justice.
The Powers sweep past like the wind and go on,
guilty people, whose strength is their god.

Lord, are you not from everlasting?
My God, my Holy One, you will never die.
You, Lord, have allowed them to oppress us;
you, my Rock, have ordained them to destroy.
Your eyes are too pure to look on evil;
you cannot tolerate wrongdoing.
Why then do you tolerate the treacherous?
Why are you silent while the wicked
swallow up those more righteous than themselves?
You have made people like the fish in the sea,
like the creatures that have no ruler.
The wicked foe pulls all of them up with hooks,
he catches them in his net,
he gathers them up in his dragnet;
and so he rejoices and is glad.
Therefore he sacrifices to his net
and burns incense to his dragnet,
for by his net he lives in luxury and enjoys the choicest food.
Is he to keep on emptying his net,
destroying the people without mercy?

I will stand at my watch
and station myself on the towers;
I will look to see what he will say,
and what answer I am to give this complaint.

Then the Lord replied:
Write down the revelation
and make it plain on paper
so that a herald may run with it.
For the revelation awaits an appointed time;
it speaks of the end
and will not prove false.
Though it linger, wait for it;
it will certainly come
and will not delay.

The righteous ones will live by their faith,
unlike those proud ones,
full of themselves and the wine of their wealth.
Indeed their wine betrays them;
spilling forth their arrogances in a vile swagger.
Because they are greedy like the grave
and like death they are never satisfied,
they gather to themselves all the nations
and take captive all the peoples.

The day will come when people will taunt them
with words such as these:

Woe to you keepers of the children,
who exploit them for profit.
A Beamer, a Merc., a Jag or a few,
How about beans and rice? We are humans too.
Your god is your stomach
and your glory your shame.
Your day will be,
and you will not.

Woe to you tyrants, presidents, CEO’s and Shepherds.
Empires are built,
and people forgotten.
We were deceived,
and deceived we lay dying.
You flattened our bodies as pavement,
and built walls with our bones.
But your kingdom is fading,
the end is in sight.
Your reign ends today,
And ours has just begun.

Woe to you who make weapons to destroy the earth,
who say, “I love,” but through deception destroy.
You who destroy the earth with waste and fumes,
who burn forests for the sake of your kingdom.
You have scorned the earth and the Lord who has made it.
Destruction awaits you and your deeds.
Creation is being re-grown,
and you are passing as the forests you destroyed.

Woe to you who sell women and children for sex,
who kidnap and kill,
who brutalize and rape.
Justice will come,
an end not sweet.
No joy will await,
no wife to welcome you home.
In life you despised life,
and in death you will be destroyed.

Woe to you who worship your Powers,
who trust in your business, your fame and your wealth.
You bow down low to reflections of self.
You worship the demons of Mammon and Mars.
You speak words of adoration to those who are not gods.
The Lord is the Creator, Mighty in deeds.
You will be cast down,
the legs of the idol broken.
Your creations will be nothing,
and your mirror broken.

The Lord is in His holy temple,
let all the earth be silent before Him.

A prayer of him:

Lord, I have heard of your fame;
I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord.
Renew them in our day,
in our time make them known;
in wrath remember mercy.

You have come and are coming soon.

A baby born, in the arms of a mother,
There was no nobility, no fanfare, or fame.
Mighty Counselor, Prince of Peace, God with Us.
You walked and talked,
you fed and shared.
You freed the oppressed,
gave sight to the blind,
the King of the World was a servant to the least.
You touched the leper,
and cleansed the diseased.
You broke the system with no weapons of war,
you fought violence, rulers, and kingdoms
with love, peace, grace and friendship.
These Powers, the great rulers of darkness,
killed you, maimed you, beat you and despised you.
But God vindicated you.
You triumphed over the Powers,
you shamed them, making displays of them through the cross.
You washed the blood from our robes,
and made our darkness white.
Justice is your sword,
love is your banner,
joy is your shadow.

I heard and my heart rejoiced,
my lips quivered at your voice;
life swam through my bones,
and my legs ran with unending strength.
The fig tree is budding,
there are flowers on the vines,
the olive crop is growing,
and the fields will soon produce food,
the sheep are on the way to the pen,
and cattle are coming to the stalls,
and I will rejoice in the Lord,
my firstfuit has come,
the Lord, the firstborn from the dead,
He is my joy and my strength,
and He comes with the speed of spring.

Jesus is my strength;
He makes my feet like the feet of the deer,
He enables me to walk with surety in the hills.

Theology is Poetry

Theology is poetry
Even a good story needs a good storyteller

“When I think of the three,
I think of the one,
And when I think of the one,
I think of the three,
And then my eyes fill with tears and I lose all sense of where I am”
~Gregory of Nyssa

“Its not so much that Jesus is Godlike, but rather that God is actually Christlike (God is Christlike and in Him there is no un-Christlikeness at all)… From now, on all true perspectives about God must pass through the lens of a man called Jesus of Nazareth… All theology must now be understood through Christology.” The Shaping of Things to Come, 37