Sweet Summertime

This is a hastily-written, spur-of-the-moment, subject-dying-for-attention piece; I went downstairs for a minute, ate a snack, came back up, and typed. Truth: I didn't intend for it be so creepy at the first, but I kind of like the way it ended up: a juxtaposition of light and dark, the malicious vs. the innocent. I'm keeping it, even if it is faintly twisted and slightly off-kilter.
I suppose, subconsciously, I'm also thinking about the way appearances can be so misleading, so deceptive, so...apparent! It's wrong and rude to make snap judgments and then to close our minds to a different truth than one we may have fabricated (not first impressions; those aren't voluntary, and we can't help them. We can only help what we do with them.); recognizing and overcoming that tendency is something with which I have struggled for a long time.
So now. Enough petty preaching: here instead is my paltry attempt at poetry, 'Ode to Summer.'


Deep, dark, red stains on a surface
In sharp contrast white and pristine.
For what this sacrifice? Spilled life juices
Are oozing, pooling, running from the scene.
Sharp and gleaming, sinisterly silver,
A tainted knife is lying nearby
Its teeth are full of bits of once living
Flesh now still; how happened this crime?
There are no lookers-on right now;
The place is silent and dead.
Witnesses seem to be few or none—
Or perhaps they’ve merely fled.
Now a finger, brown and smooth with sun
Dips down to stem the trickling tide
Now bathes itself in a few drops of the blood
Lifts it to crimson-colored lips, which sigh…


Strawberries, oh, strawberries.
How delicious, delectable, divine are these.
Tickling, teasing, terrorizing tart
A sun-kissed fruit shaped as a heart.


Bite-size bits of bon, berry bliss,
All cold winter long their sweet squelch we miss
The first warm days of spring herald this:
Strawberries will soon be ripe to be picked.


Festivals and carnivals, gay galas and fairs,
We seize a chance to celebrate these treats too often rare.
We bake them into pies and cakes; they occupy our culinary dreams;
They rest in downy shortbread cups, and drown in fresh whipped cream.
They create, as a garnish on a salad,
A new joie de vivre for the palate.
They are simply irresistible, the fiends,
When bathed in melted chocolate streams.


Sharp, succulent, sloppy little burst,
We thank you for your sweet sugars,
Surprising and sour, the evidence of your life,
We eat you by the peck; you are a delight.
You smell of green summer and hot sun and fresh air;
We crave your scent, pine for you everywhere.
We love your cool juices, refreshing and dark,
We never could hate you for leaving your mark
For staining our fingers and
On lips and tongues lingering
Oh, enticing strawberry,
You make our hearts want to sing!


On the slab of white, a dark, red stain;
But no crime was committed; no one left in pain.
It’s only a squirt of fresh strawberry juice
Funneling down to the hungry sink drain,
A delicious reminder, a last crimson view,
One final splash of summery, sweet, scarlet rain.

Helpless

"For the LORD is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations."

~Psalm 100:5

God's grace and His mercy are never failing; in all things is He faithful, and He will never leave me nor forsake me.

I can't imagine a happier truth, a greater promise.

I can't. I cannot. I can not. 

What a depressing phrase; nobody enjoys admitting that they are unable - incapable, incompetent, inept. That kind of attitude - the negativity, the hopelessness and powerless that accompany the sentiment - is admonished against in a goal-driven, ambitious society. The phrase engenders a pessimism and a depression that can be well nigh impossible to overcome; yet, if we do not admit the limits of our abilities, we are truly deceiving ourselves.

I. Can't.

Every single day, I am confronted with the truth: I can't win, I can't be enough, I cannot fulfill others' expectations of me. I will never be enough. Even should I do something well, or complete a task to the best of my ability, it will be tainted with imperfection; I cannot accomplish anything without adding a modicum of disappointment into the equation.

Despite this knowledge, I continue to try to provide for myself, to strive; I constantly push aside the hand proffered to help and declare 'No! I will do for myself.'

Each time I fail, however, through the anger and the hurt, my God comforts me. No matter how I've disrespected Him or hated Him, He is there. He holds out His hands - those loving, capable hands with the cruel scars caused by my ill will - and gathers me to Himself, promising to hold me up, to sustain me. Even as I turn again and again to my idols - to my grades, to my parents, or to those things that should be good but that have become twisted and imperfect, such as love for others - He waits. Those other gods all fail me, but He never does. He gathers me back into His fold the instant I stumble and cry out, one of countless stray lambs, and soothes me with His voice:

'Be still, and know that I am God.' 

He alone is God.

He alone is good.

He alone loves me forever and will never disappoint me, never let me go, never tell me I am worthless or undeserving, no matter how true those things may be. 

He forgives me every time I spurn Him and tear my cares away from Him, clinging to them myself.

He waits ever so patiently for my fragile arms to grow weary, to receive my burdens and my worries back into Himself and to cradle an exhausted me and hold me close to His heart.

If I put pen to paper to list every example of God's faithfulness to me, I should have a book several hundred pages long by the time I had recalled everything; I will settle instead for just one example, the most recent in an ever-growing store.

Today, in a fit of frustration and self-contempt, I checked the Bible Gateway homepage, hoping to be distracted. Immediately upon reading the verse, I was humbled. Gently rebuked, I bowed my head in shame and wonder - shame at being caught turning once again to myself to fill me, and wonder that the God of the universe, the Good Shepherd, loves me.

“...And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

~Ephesians 3:17b-19

Love that surpasses knowledge - a fascinating, incomprehensible idea in a world where knowledge is equal to power. What surpasses power? Here: love does.

All the fullness of God - how does one measure that? It is impossible. God, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, is not an entity to be contained or parceled into measuring cups and spoons. He defies the bounds of logic, time, and place. He is infinite, and in such, so is His Love.

So I am left with queries. How? Why? Questions with answers I may never know, and at which I will always wonder. Even though I cannot (that phrase again) understand how overwhelmingly immeasurable is Christ's love for me, I can and will revel in the fact that it is there, and that it sustains me when all around me crumbles. 

When the people I trust and love the most reject me out of spite, or when they are unable to heal me in the face of their own brokenness.

When I've disappointed someone, and they tell me so in no uncertain terms.

When the tapestry of my future warps and snarls, and I'm left holding the threads of a broken dream.

Then, and always, God is there: reminding me with kindness; rebuking me with love; reaching for me with patience.

Thanks be to God. He reminds me, especially when I push Him away, that He loves me in spite of me, and that He will do so forever; in this truth am I glad – pleased to be powerless.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

~Isaiah 53:6

"But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus."
~Romans 3:21-24

I Cannot; but He Can.

'Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."'
~Matthew 19:26