Come chisels of your refusal
blow by blow to my echoing cries,
The desperate thumping on heaven’s door,
yet a finger unmoved.
Quivering lips plead for a thing or two
—sometimes for a life to live,
a heart to heal or a basket to fill;
The groans that survive the distance
bounce back from heaven’s floor;
The distress calls of drowned hope,
un-alive and afloat.
My shaking knees stumble
losing grip on life;
The denial in thousand silences
fades my frame to dust.
Once your Son prayed too,
and the heavens slammed doors.
His sweat turned to blood,
While He pleaded alone in the dark;
Thousand silences to His dying breath, He too pleaded “why?”
(To cruel chisels of refusal, Christ Surrendered:
The Cornerstone, A Firm Foundation)
Oh, to have His prayers heard
and the cup I was to drink that He passed!
What mercies can surpass that denial to His call?
Come these refusals to my heart
that chisel away disordered loves—
Some hollow stones and toys,
some impairments or a loss that realign my soul.
What mercies can surpass the un-healing aches of this life,
the uncovering of my wounded desires and the frail will to deny?
What mercies can surpass the thousand silences to my fall?
