temple

This is your house
Made by man's hands
According to your blueprints
A faded picture
Of what is unseen

I doubt
You could ever reside here
Darkness has crept in
Through a crack in the window
Now it lets itself in the front door
When you arrived unannounced
I locked you in the front chamber
To keep you safe, so you wouldn't see
That unruly hazard walks free through corridors unkempt
I wanted to corral them
To usher them out the backdoor

Instead, your temple has become
a white-washed sepulcher
A haven for thieves
a nesting ground for vipers
a market place of filth, filled
with seedy cellars of unspeakable acts
a carnival of deception and false light
indulgences for sale
merchants of mercy
prophets of profit,
"Give me your soul
and I'll mend your sole"
where we present presents for your presence

How did it get this way
I beg you
to reclaim this ground
To take back what is yours

I beg you
To kick down the door
Brandishing a whip
Wielding your sword, your truth
Overturn the tables
Tear down the altered altars
and the Asherah poles
Ransack this darkness lair
Drive out the whores, the mercenaries, the tax collectors
Clean out your Father's house
of those that fall to their knees to prey
Crush the idols to other deities
Drive out the blind guides
The brood of vipers
for they tithe their spices
And forget justice
Blood of the prophets is on their hands
Blood is on my hands

This is your house
Take back what is yours
This is your house


Reading about Jesus clearing out the temple and connecting that to the scripture says our bodies are temples was powerful. It brings out all sorts of unnoticed things when we see the parallels with what angered Jesus in the temple. I think about how if Jesus were to show up, how he would respond to what he saw in His Father's house. A whole bunch of emotions are stirred up, thinking about what I would do to clean up before he got here. Then, it is horrifying to realize that the Spirit already resides here. How many altars to Baal have been built, how many Asherah poles are there? How have I misunderstood grace and justice and thought salvation is for sale? Are there things I don't even know are wrong in there and won't ever know until Jesus sends them packing? How do we turn this into powerful prayer?

I have had this in my head for almost 2 years now and just haven't felt like it comes out right, but wanted to get it down and take it as a first draft (the concept in the mind is clear and yet the words...they don't come). Suggestions welcome.

my garden

this isn't mine, but it was given to me in a vision so clear.

i survey my garden; what i see is that the soil of my heart is filled and covered with a multitude of colors. i want to show Him how beautiful it is but i leave him standing there because my eyes are continually drawn to the weeds that weave their way between the fruits of my labor. sometimes they blend in, sometimes they are visibly choking the life from the other plants as they sprout faster and quicker and absorb all the light.

not wanting him to see it that way for it seems to root in neglect, i go to work. i grab the weeds that i can see and rip them from the soil. unfortunately, they are anchored well and so the roots remain. others i see, i get a solid grip at the base and remove the weed by its roots. i see however the visible damage on the roots, evidence that remnants remain locked in the dirt.

He walks over to me and i try to get him to wait longer, to stand back. he inquires, "do you need help?" i scoff, "no! i've got this! see...!" He takes the weeds and silently approaches my garden, much to my chagrin.

screams, pleads, and yells do no good.

to my horror he squats down and begins to dig in the soil. slowly, with care, the digs up around a weed. deeper and deeper he goes, using his hands, filling his fingernails with the mire.

"no! what are you doing? please, i beg you just let me do it. i wanted to present it perfect for you!"

i rush over to him, hating to see him soiling his hands, his perfect hands for me. i grab them and pull them from the work. i expect to see a prince's hands--soft and gentle as He is the Prince of Peace. instead, i feel rough, worn hands accustomed to hard labor. dirt stains between the callouses. the scars; memories of wounds, splinters, cuts, bruises. the scars. the scars.

what i saw was that we try to uproot our weeds because we want to present ourselves to Christ as He would want to see us. we don't want him to know that they are there, so we hide and wait and wait. we then show him strictly what we want him to see. what i see is that we try and give Jesus whatever it is that we have or are going through when we don't even know how deep some stuff is rooted and so we give it to him prematurely. we have to let him IN and SEE our hearts so he can walk us through it, work it out with us. i don't know about you but there is always this fear, of letting Him see our heart, i want to get the weeds and and show him the weeds that i've uprooted and once i'm clean, then he can see what i have. but this is imperfect and will never work, we will wear ourselves out this way.

need to just start up again

I never intended to take such an extended hiatus from writing on here. I am not sure what happened. I could blame a change of environment and adjusting to that. I don't know about other writers out there, but you find a place or setting that just works for you and you can only write in that space and time. I suppose I haven't found that yet here out of my own laziness.

I do have a lot of things and ideas that I wish to touch upon...it would be kind of crazy to try and tackle it all in this post. I think the purpose of this one is to start again.

I have missed writing. You get ideas and they float in your head for awhile, but unless you do something with them or write them down the more likely they are to get lost or overturned in our streams of consciousness. It is a chance to make concrete, to make visual nebulous and drifting thoughts. To mark your inspirations so that you can go back and look on them later and see where you have gone in relation to it. This is exactly what I have needed, but have avoided these last months. How I regret it.

So here's to starting again and making an effort on other things I've thought about but avoided.