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 to unwrap dependence. Believing the lie, they say, ‘We will be like God. Let us make, build, create 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 the sparrow and lily.
Many sunsets ago, in the darkness that still aches, he came and said he will run to them again–run into a deadly garden and clothe them with garments, this time stained with his own blood. ‘Sink low your star. 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, 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.”