Grasping for Expression

Not sure that this falls into any official category of writing... perhaps a song or spoken word. At any rate I didn't want to change it from the way it is.

You may recognize the last portion from Counting Crow's "Anna Begins"

Grasping For Expression

I remember filling up and falling down to my knees

When Your love anew came over me

Gasping for air and grasping for expression

Long after I was born again

Desperate, frustrated and trying to earn it

Inadvertently, I almost spurned it

Till Your love cascaded over me

And finally…through me

Like bathing in a lightfall

Step down from golden throne through stars?

To take on flesh and pain .. be marred?

To feel the sting of broken nature

I cannot but worship this humble posture

Not just forgive but love your enemies?

Pray for the religious, rebellious murderer?

Touch the leper, comfort the prostitute

And even forgive the one who prostituted her?

You would heal  Malchus’ ear

So that he could hear

You say, “Permit even this”

How deep, how wide, how long, how high

Is this love?  Four dimensions –

A hint,  perhaps,  that it is beyond comprehension

And beyond condition – but not beyond the malnutrition

Of our starved and thirsty heart.

It takes both a father and a mother’s heart

To fully express how kind “Thou art”

To take back a wayward child

Though proud, rebellious  and wild

Not even a lecture to hear?

No.

Just an embrace… .and a tear.

What love is this?

This time when kindness falls like rain

It washes me away.

And He begins to change my mind.

His kindness bangs a gong,

 Its moving me along

And Oh Lord,

I’m so ready for this sort of thing

Perfect Peace (by Annie Johnson Flint)

Perfect Peace

by Annie Johnson Flint

 

I do not look back

 God knows the fruitless efforts,

The wasted hours, the sinning, the regrets;

I leave them all with Him who blots the record,

And mercifully forgives and then forgets.

I do not look forward

God sees all the future,

The road that, short or long, will lead me Home.

And He will face with me its every trial,

And bear for me the burdens that may come.

I do not look around me

Then would fears assail me,

So wild the tumult of earth’s restless seas,

So dark the world, so filled with woe and evil,

 So vain the hope of comfort or of ease.

I do not look in

For then am I most wretched,

My self hath not on which to stay my trust.

Nothing I see save failures and shortcomings,

And weak endeavors crumbling into dust.

But I look up –

 Into the face of Jesus.

For there my heart can rest, my fears are stilled;

And there is joy and love and light for darkness,

And Perfect Peace, and every hope fulfilled.