What would behoove me to instantly declare God not to be God unless He followed my script in some tediously exacting manner? I must confess that I am less likely to believe that it’s a matter of some narcissistic demand that I freely pen my own script. Rather, I think it’s fear that I’m too inadequate to follow God’s.
Death would not surprise us as often as it does, if we let go of the misbelief that newborns are less mortal than the elderly.
Sooner or later I will realize that the very things I most desperately need are the very things I am unable to give myself. Therefore, I will either be left despising the fact that I am doomed to live out a life that is perpetually empty, or I will realize that an empty tomb is the single thing that will eternally fill me.
I am pressed to admit that I don’t have the capacity to understand the bloodied horrors of a cross and the wild exhilaration of an empty tomb. But at the point that I think I completely understand God, I have at that very point humanized Him and in that very action I have lost Him. Therefore, I much prefer to simply marvel.
Do I dare believe such an absurdly outrageous story that a man would die, lay lifeless in some tomb for three days and then somehow live again? Yet, if I dare to consider it, is that not exactly what I so desperately desire for this lifeless life of mine? And is Easter God’s tenderly outrageous way of telling me that that is exactly what I can have?
My sin murdered Him. And out of this self-loathing shame borne of the understanding that I could perpetrate such a heinous act, I am barely able to raise my head sufficiently to ask what crazed insanity would prompt Jesus to walk out of an empty tomb for the single purpose of pursuing a decaying soul that murdered Him? And I would be wise to consider that the question itself is asked only because I have yet to touch the barest periphery of God’s love despite the fact that because of an empty tomb it stands right in front of me.
THE NAKED HEARTFrom womb to tomb,There came and went -Only you.Poor or rich,You will die withOnly you.All the wealth you harvestIn the living,Will go to others when you are dead.But the true test of a lion of God -Is to keep giving with your own hands,Before you rest in your final bed.
Does one love a statue?" she demanded. "Shall I caress a picture? Shall I rain tears or kisses over the mere semblance of a life that does not live, shall I fondle hands that never return my clasp? Love! Love is in my heart -yes! like a shut-up fire in a tomb,but you hold the key, and the flame dies for want of air.
The mint from your breath, the milk from your breast, the best of your mind, now in its worst state of condition. From the womb to the tomb, as a mild flower, you break your petals upon blossom, and seize death openly. Leaving your fragrance to spin and dance, one last time before being blown away.
You are a cool cemetery.You have the sinner’s graveYou have the saint’s earthcollidingYou have all the bedsnarrow as a knife;as if a rally of tombstones to defend death.But you can’t really postponethe inauguration of my burial,can you?From the poem - Few Words to Cemetery