(Inspired by “Glorified” by Pastor John Piper, which can be found here: https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/glorified)
As far as any eye could see,
There was no green. But every tree
Was skeletal, their limbs like scars,
Charred remnants reaching toward the stars.
The earth was cracked, the asphalt split,
A wasteland where the fires were lit,
And silence stretched, an emptied vapor,
The echoes left by sudden death.
A world undone, a final page,
The smoldering proof of holy rage.
The sky hung low, a crimson glare,
The sun itself no longer there
Just live-coals drifting, burning bright,
And folding into ceaseless night.
The oceans gone, the rivers dry,
Their absence just a pitied sigh,
And in their place, the grit ran deep,
A graveyard where the shadows weep.
The Lord stood still, above the waste,
His breath a storm, His form erased
By firelight and by splintered sky
A King returned, a battle cry,
Still ringing through the scorched remains
Of all He born with righteous veins.
His arms hung bare, His fingers slick,
Still dripping blood in slow, thick ticks
The harvest reaped, the blade still wet
With debts unpaid, judgment met.
The sword in His right hand lay low,
Its edge aglow, its hunger slowed
Into the earth, where shattered bones
Lay whispered prayers in silent tones.
He stared upon the land He made,
Where once He bled, where once He prayed.
His lips pulled tight, His holy will
A shadowed force, then breaking, spilled
Like rivers down His face, as though
Some deep and final grief must flow.
And there upon that blade of red,
The weeping of our God was shed.
A reckoning. A silence thick.
A groaning wound that would not stitch.
Then a gasp. A pause. A turning slow,
A shifting from the death below.
His eyes, still burning, searched the deep
And found His bride, long lost in sleep.
She, hollowed, spent, and aching thin,
Still bore the scars of all her sin.
She trembled ther, her heart a tomb,
A wreck of loss, of grief, of gloom.
And then He spoke. His voice unmade
The quivering ground, the breaking fade
Of darkness long since worn and sown
A sound that called the world His own.
“Watch this,” He said, and lifted high
His arm to fracture death and sky.
Come forth, O life, from emptied graves,
Come forth, you lost, you burned, you maimed!
Come forth, my love, rise from the grit,
Be clothed in burnished gold, be clothedwith us!
And as He spoke, the throne unfurled,
Like molten glass it kissed the world.
A burnished the current split the ground,
And forbearance’s laughter poured unbound.
It rose, it ran, it curled, it climbed,
And every shadow fell behind.
And on the banks, as grasses spread,
The dead stood up and shook their heads
As if awoken from a dream,
As if reborn in glow unseen.
A stream unraveled through the grit,
A ribbon spun both grave and just,
And where it ran, the dead grass stirred,
The earth inhaled His living Word.
A lake unfurled, a garden woke,
The trees stretched tall as if they spoke.
And in a flash, the saints were there,
Descending swift through perfect air.
And as I knelt beside the stream,
I drank and woke inside a dream.
The taste was glow, it rang like song,
And every the dull insistence I’d known was gone.
I turned and saw a shimmered past
My mother laughing, free at last.
My father ran, his step was new,
No sickness left, he now brand-new.
And through the meadows, bounding fast,
My childhood friends came back at last.
Forgiven, now I’ve been set free,
If he forgives, then so can we.
And in the valley, stretching wide,
The bent stood up tall, the lame now stride.
A man with arms that once were gone
Now lifts them high to praise the Son.
A woman once confined to pain
Now runs and twirls in falling rain.
The mother holds the child she lost,
Their pain unwound, the years uncrossed.
The burdened laugh, the weary rest,
With all made right, and all are blessed.
And every sorrow, every scar,
The wounds we bore, the years that mar,
The things we lost, the days we mourned,
with silent cries, the nights forlorn
They’ve melted now like winter’s frost,
In ceaseless joy, redeemed, recast.
And stretching past eternity,
The hand of the gift unearned still reaches me.
Oh God most holy, God of glow,
Unveil to us the coming sight,
Of ceaseless days, where pain will cease,
And love will us crown the reign of peace.
And may this promise set us free,
To walk in hope until we see,
The place where every shadow dies,
And heaven, finally, hears our cries.
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