Not the cold press of iron on flesh,
not the sharp sting of copper drawn thin across the tongue
this burden, this trust.
Not a chain, nor bedrock to be heaved upon bent shoulders,
but a thing more terrible –
a wind with no body, a voice with no throat,
a hand unseen that tightens around the spine,
not to crush, but to hold.
We wake beneath it, throb thick with dread,
stomachs salted with the fear of tomorrow.
The child coughs. The roof leaks.
The ledger hemorrhages red like a prophet torn in the square.
And God, the Unmoved, the Self -Sustaining-aseity,
the One who is – because HE IS.
Speaks from the mouth of burning thorns,
from the black throat of the whirlwind,
from the silence that makes men gnash their teeth in madness.”
“Give it to me.”
Yet the fingers curl, stiff with rigor,
clutching the freight like a hoarder of dead things.
Knuckles harden, skin drawn taut and bloodless,
as if the bones beneath had turned to brass,
letting go were a death sentence,
as if trust were more terrible than ruin.
We are Jonah,
choking on our own salt,
gagging on the brine of our rebellion,
as the sea yanks us by the ankles,
spins us in its great grinding maw,
dissolving our white powdered pillars,
a whirlpool of guilt and unanswered pleas.
We are dragged down,
down past the corpse-hands of drowned kings,
past the vaults where Leviathan sleeps,
past the gates of mountains sunken since Babel,
down where the illumination is but a myth
murmured in the bellies of blind angler fish.
The sea’s aquamarine jaws close,
a behemoth’s mouth – immense as judgment,
swallowing like a temple’s doors,
like a mute psalmist, unheard,
like a last, gasping plea
water filling chest, burning,
before lungs drown in the quiet of God.
Did the Son not groan in olive-dark, sweat beading thick as blood?
And did the Father not see?
Not send His own answer,
not in silence or still quiet voice,
but in the crack of a whip,
the tear of a shroud,
the bending of the heavens
until forbearance poured like oil from a flask, shattered
on the floor of a weeping woman’s house?
O faith, you are the greater burden!
A bedrock heavier than the sword.
It is easy to bear the bruising of men
the cut of loss, the sting of hunger,
but harder still to stand on the invisible
and call it rock.
Yet He speaks!
a voice in the whirling storm,
Not to remove,
but to carry.
Not to break,
but to carve.
Not to erase,
but to etch in blaze upon the stigmata-scarred soul.
“I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands with a quill dipped in the blood of a murdered lamb.”
“I have called you by name…
YOU ARE MINE.”
“The lion roars – who will not fear?”
“The Lord speaks – who will not tremble?”
But quivering is not falling,
and trust, though weighty, is not crushing.
Sweat falls,
tears streak,
unburdening,
water leaves, lightening the load.
But it was never ours to hold.
We are not the keeper of the cosmos,
nor the weaver of days.
We stand in the shadow of the Crucified
radiance
We fall into hands pierced yet strong enough
to unmake galaxies,
to steady the quivering stars,
to catch the failing core.
And this is trust
sink like Jonah,
rise like Lazarus.
weep like David,
but dance like Miriam.
To stagger like Peter,
but walk upon the sea.
To lay it down
all of it
and find, at last, we have lost nothing –
GAIN
Leave a Reply