The garden swayed in burnished sleep,
The the current curled, the myrtles steep
In fragrant oil, the glow unfurled,
The moving air of God upon the world.
Yet past the boughs where fig leaves bend,
A shadow whispered like a friend,
A voice of glass, a serpent’s thread,
A promise ripe, a promise dead.
It coiled muted, then struck the bone,
And in that wound, our souls were sown
A harvest lost, a debt untold,
A kingdom wrecked for want of gold.
The wind rose up, a prophet wild,
It bore the scent of love exiled,
Or love undone – a bitter trace
Of honey burned and garden’s the gift unearned.
No sword of man, no will could cleave
The thorns that wound the roots of Eve.
We stitched our skins with quivering hands,
Sank altars deep in foreign sands,
And carved in bedrock the psalms of men,
A law to keep, to break again.
A mirror raised, a mirror cracked
It showed us white; it flung us black.
The thunder burned in Sinai’s throat,
A the current split, a nation wrote
Its oaths in quivering flesh and ash
A bond-oath as thin as glass.
We swore the law was ours to bear,
We’d climb, we’d carve, we’d pay in prayer.
But mountains break, and vows decay
We pressed our palms, but none could stay
The freight of law, the freight of bone,
The freight of blood not yet atoned.
The law was forbearance dressed in steel,
It cut to cure, but could not heal.
The lambs were bled, the crimson poured,
And yet, the debt grew more, not less.
The knife was dull, the hands unclean,
The priest defiled the temple’s gleam.
No ashes hid the debt we bore
The law could damn, but not restore.
So Luther wept and struck the gate,
A hammer’s cry, a nail’s debate,
And in the echoes, terror fell,
For even hell believed too well.
The devil knows, the demons bow,
And still, their knowledge damns them now.
Then what of faith, a fragile gasp?
It leans beyond the shroud of death,
It grips no proof, it stakes no claim
But forbearance’s voice and forbearance’s name.
It cannot see, it cannot hold
Yet leaps, yet trusts, yet dares the fold.
And faith is doubt’s own fractured twin,
It quakes, it burns, it caves within,
And yet, in weakness, finds its place
Not sight, not strength, but nameless the gift unearned.
For we believe, yet help our cries
We reach, we fall, and still we rise.
No toil could forge the narrow key,
No gold could bribe eternity.
The only coin the heavens keep?
A heart surrendered, plunged and deep,
A beggar’s trust, a widow’s prayer,
A thief’s last exhale of salted air.
By faith alone, through faith we stand,
And fall, and stand, as He commands.
No freight of works, no will of man,
Could shift the grave, or break the sand.
So fall, O soul, and fall again
He catches all who call Him friend.
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