If I could touch
the rough wood,
let Your blood drip down
onto my fingertips,
if I could hear the ragged
breath, see the flesh
torn,
if I could witness fists clenched
upon spikes
listen to the sobs
watch your cruelly crowned head
hang,
if I heard the hoarse prayer,
forgive,
considered eyes full
of such sorrow,
if I knew the cry that rang out,
It is finished!
was really for me,
for me.
If I had stood upon the quaking
dark earth, bereft of God,
if I had seen the centurion wonder,
the curtain split, the graves open wide
in defeat,
if I had held Your breathless
body one last time
before the end.
Then,
my Jesus,
would I be brave?
Would I own you, boldly,
loudly, wanting all
to know?
Truth is,
I’m a coward
and a fool.
Truth is,
I fidget away
while You hang dying.
I consume and am consumed
by nothing
while You,
the Everything,
gasp Your last breath,
bleed and bruise and break,
for me.
For me.
Truth is,
if I believed it
all the way,
then all my ways
of living would be
You.
Let me sink
beneath
Your dying
and know truly
it is
for me.
Let me feel the weight
of this terrible
love,
that I might know it
unbearable, might be
fully broken,
might be
crucified.
