King Neb

Knock it down.
All that gold.
All that pride.
I want to see your miracles through the fires I create
Make me a different sort of pyromaniac
Take my ambition, my selfishness, my love for idols that don’t talk back
I pray against the furnace I built by myself,
For those sparks not to fly
For that fire not to lick.
Bless Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
Mystery stood with them in my attempt to burn them.

Mystery, I need you.
I don’t know how to hear from you.
You, the one who spoke so confidently to those three friends.
Help me.
I want to murder, I want riches, I want to be the King of all no matter what they say
But I’m beginning to think you’re jealous not of my wealth or my power or my rule
but simply jealous of me.
Why else would you have sent them? Why else would they be alive – and me with them?
How can you be so confident of your reign, God?
How could you let me destroy your nations and your people? What kind of God are you?
I fear your insanity even as I ponder my own.
My conscious cannot understand so speak to me dark sayings of the night...

Reality

When we ask God to break our hearts, He will.

Help us be repairer of broken walls, God.

Complete us in our weakness, Jesus.

Fill us, Holy Spirit.

In Christ's name,
Amen.

Imago Dei

What did my young eyes see?

They say the human face is complicated, many lines and creases for a child to trace the course of life.
Sometimes, I put my fingers on these lines. I ran them down my mother’s cheeks. My father’s brows.

I saw these lines drawn out as well. Pencil, lead, color. Brush, paint, splash. Sometimes, life was present there too. What joy was expressed in wonderful images of heroes and heroines chasing their dreams and unlocking their desires!

These lines take time. The images that make stories take time. A rush of images becomes time.

Time that became lost to symbols. Icons that did not convey meaning; rather, they were signposts for quick exchanges, often involving our wallets. A proclamation of purchase, not of story.

This good here! That good there! But what is good anymore?

Images increased their coercion by selling something not fully understood.

Mystery left these lines.

You need this. You need that. This is what that means. No questions.

No people. No humanity. Just orders. The lines draw us into corners.

False choices. Our imaginations cannot open themselves to the fullness of a blossom or the resurrection of the Springtime.

We have even attempted to draw God.

How has God become always on our side, always forgiving us only for the sins we choose to acknowledge, and speaking personally to us, but somehow not about the needs around the corner?

Twisted truth, but isn’t the real thing supposed to be good news for everyone?

What happens when we let God be big?

The world is righted. The dead become alive. We are never comfortable, but always joyous.

Our image of God is a blank page, and we are expectant of God’s miracles to dazzle us, to dizzy us, to tire us and then fill us with energy – and then for us to realize God has let us hold the pencil. Not by our strength, but God’s. Shall we draw together?

All the Seed Does Is Grow

God loves
God protects
God empowers

God takes us out of the miry clay and puts us on a rock
But we must have sight.
We need to know where this God might be, what God might be doing?

We don’t think we’re dirty do we?
Because what if this God is all around us…but in us too?
What if miracles are more than tall tales? What if they originate in us?

Did the twelve, the seventy two
The sent out, just lie to Jesus when they returned?

Or were they loved, protected, empowered to do Jesus’ work?
To preach good news to the poor
To proclaim freedom for the prisoners
And recovery of sight for the blind
To release the oppressed
To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

What if it’s all about being reckless and wise?
Knowing this love is something we should protect jealously
Because the question is not will it change the world
But how can we find enough open space, a big enough pot for this mustard seed to grow
Because it is unstoppable.

God, expand our hearts and give that seed a home.