Love’s Restraint – Poem

davidluiz — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:17:53 +0000

I often wonder at God’s power
Displayed in brave Epsilon and the “timidest” flower
Ageless days and golden flashes of light
Leave in its wake a terrible mortal sight
But my deepest wonders dwell with God’s shyness
Often almost incongruent with Reality’s Highness
How the One could bend himself so low
To permit human freedom and its frailties to know
Why doesn’t he seek to control our actions?
Why does he love green growth and slow captions?
Why permit us to doubt the most thrilling realities?
And leave us to battle with crippling uncertainties?
Why does he allow us ask questions?
Why not protect his fame and reputation with miraculous gestures?
And a babe’s skin did he accept in mangy mangers
To be cared for or possibly rejected by Jewish teenagers!
Why did he throw out the bread for boring stones?
And accept plain persuasion instead of authority’s thrones?
How could he have beheld Herod’s cursing mouth?
Or watched as a young rich lad walked away uncouth
Why settle for twelve when there’s twelve million?
Or discourse and truth when there’s war and the glory of Gideon?
Why tread the riskier way to the souls of men, O Man of Galilee?
The path of freedom and patience never guarantees victory!
Use power – the power that molded heaven’s awesome lot!
Win Earth’s rebellion to yourself without a battle fought!
Little wonder your wiser followers have sought to improve on your way,
To hold the world under miracle, mystery and authority’s sway
How can you look upon injustice without squinted eyes?
Why withhold the earthquake, the fire and men’s submitting sighs?
Is it because you are not there, Doubted One?
Can you not make your answer brighter than the sun?
Why not impose goodness on sorry mortal heads?
And arrange in one fell sweep Eden’s restored waterbeds?
How is it that the Hands that contrived ferocious beasts
On freedom, patience, and this weakness insists?
Can you not hide behind the excuse of your infinite wisdom?
And hurl defaulters and doubters into a hellish kingdom?
Why do you wait and cry and shed tears for patience’s spoil
And await blossoming seeds – you who made the soil!
Relieve my distress for you must be able!
And, pray, answer why you have made yourself vulnerable!
You can make us quake with black fear
And yet you restrain your great power there.
Indeed, why do you still bear to smell my breath?
For I have deserved much more than a gruesome death
This is the God I have wondered at
At whose feet I have never sat
The One whose greatest power is his weakness
Whose Highness is his solemn Shyness
May we live out this greatest of realizations
That the frailties of love are heaven’s carnations
And that there is beauty – O wondrous beauty – and greatness
Grace and hope stainless
Wonder and life grander than any mortal could ever paint
In this life of God – the miracle of love’s restraint.

The Behold File » Sovreign

Love’s Restraint – Poem