by Zach Kincaid
After they listened to the devil’s sweet nothings,
all nature groaned.
“How can it be?
These God-bearers fall from a cliff
when they can hide in the cleft.
In a bite, in a whisper,
they plot out how to unwrap dependence.
Believing the lie, they say,
’We will be like God.
Let us make, build, create in our own way.’
And the wind grew wings,
the trees clapped their hands, and
God pitched a tent for the sun.
We didn’t forget. His ‘follow me’
called out through the caves of his mountain,
rolling down desert streams,
where deer pant for him.
Every morning he exclaims, ‘Again!’,
and paints evenings in childlike color.
Yet the God bearers plucked out their eyes
and followed hurrying greed,
never finding curiosity to be worth it,
comfortable to gray out sparrow and lily.
Many sunsets ago in the darkness that still aches,
he comes and runs to them again–
runs into a deadly garden and
clothes them with garments stained in his blood.
‘Sink low your star, and
guide home the wandering bearers
who come from far away to see how the one
who bears my image afresh, through her womb,
sends out into my earth, me. I AM.
She will sing my song, echoed from Hannah, and,
with angels and archangels, announcing the myth made real.’
With stars joining Heaven’s hosts in a mass of glory,
with ignorant shepherds shaming wise gluttons,
with quiet mystery failing any tongue too glib,
we come – to grapple with the God who breathed us into being,
to announce and make new his eternal promises,
to see and be amazed at his mercy and grace.
Come and calm our storms. Charm joints and marrow to bend.
Spit into the dirt for the God bearers to see anew,
so the way and truth will thunderously resound
in every barren and dormant heart with praise to you,
Yahweh, Messiah, the great I AM and Author of Life.