Prayer, October 20 2007
I felt the walls closing in on me tonight
A little more,
Middle class blandness.
I could see myself ordinary
Getting older
Busy with children, with work, with food
Only nodding, absently, at God once a week
My heart slowly congealing
My brain settling lower in my skull
I cried out in horror and longing
For the extraordinary
For cars dangling on pole bridges
For hints of death slithering in the grass
For life passed from mouth to mouth with joy
For lightning, for thunder,
For running flat out, for being needed,
For tears and gasps of joy and shouts of laughter.
I have tasted it! I have floated in it!
I must go.
I’m running…
wow, janelle. exciting and strangely disturbing. i like it.
ReplyDeleteThanks - that was like fresh, cold sleet slapping against my cheek. I'm running, too.
ReplyDeleteO, save us from a slow smothered life! I am glad that our God doesn't immediately quench the smoking flax - but better a quenching than a lifetime of choking, blinding smoke and never the warmth and light and energy of consuming flame! O, that our enemy would fight us with flashing sword rather than that friendly arm about our shoulders! We don't even feel the jab of the poisoned tip that sends its sweet, lukewarm languor creeping softly and deceptively over us until the air is thick, and the iron of reason and the flash of joy pale to shadows, and we become content to live painlessly and dreamlessly...
Disturb our slumber, wake us, though it be to pain! Let us love with Him who offered up his Son! Let us live with Him who offered up himself! Let us glorify our great God with the breath of Him whose first and only joy is to exalt the name of Jesus to the highest place in heaven and earth. Let us feel and know and breathe and live - for the sole pleasure and honor of the One who rules the universe with his word, and who is Light and Love and Truth...