written with the ink of my tears

i don’t understand you

 

i have denied you for years

why have you not denied me

your love can still bring me to tears

yet i turn away from all i see

but you won’t turn away from me

 

i’ve demanded you be put on trial

for not using your power to stop

every act that is hostile

that aid workers have to clean up and mop

why haven’t your sheltering arms let me drop?

 

i’m told about the chosen few

and what i must do to be chosen by you

i scream, “so then all love is conditional?!”

your ambassadors are so traditional

 

yet with all this debt i’ve accrued

i find you transitional

from heaven’s throne to my flesh and bone

you find me feasting on my vomit

you offer me the bread of life

tell me how much you love

your bride, your wife

and that i matter so much to you

even amid my claims of irrelevance

that you left the affairs of running

distant galaxies to find me

you are not afraid

of the dark streets of decay

 

i am not in a church

or on a high hill

i am where angels fear to tread

better left for dead

but when you say,

“child, do you know that i still love you?”

 

i look at the empty bottles that surround

and confound, “how can you forgive me?

i’ve shook my fist in anger at you for years

i’m waiting for the lightning

the anger and the rod

 

i never knew i could cry so many tears

when the holiest of the holy

the only begotten Son of God

answered

by touching my vile form

and holding me right where i lay

on these putrid dark streets of decay

 

he didn’t condemn or demand i recant

he did what i couldn’t

what i can’t

 

he didn’t require or even conspire

he held me

me

the author of the dark streets of decay

who has gone so far astray

that i supposed even God

no longer knew where i was

 

you know where i am?

i am in the deepest depths of sin

with my Savior’s arms around me

 

***