This poem was inspired by the promise in Jude that Jesus Christ is able to keep us from stumbling and make us stand in His presence and by the biblical account of Elijah as found in 1 Kings 19.
Poetry: Kept
Blood on my hands–though not guilt,
Blood on my sword clean up to the hilt.
Over four hundred monsters lie slain,
Priests and purveyors of the profane.
And the crowd, repentant, was kneeling,
To His infinite grace appealing.
In grim victory I stood just one day ago.
The Most Holy’s offering in flames aglow.
.
What threat sent me to scurry away?
What peril o’re this craven heart held sway?
A woman, words venomous as the adder,
And that she’s a queen shouldn’t really matter.
Promised I and her priests be of one accord
Our blood be painted on a prophet’s sword.
If her words held any real power,
I would be gone by this very hour.
.
Underneath this tree, my reason returns
And a weary heart that for rest yearns.
Scorning a life born to heathens and robbers
Today I know I am no better than my fathers.
In this ensuing clarity, I know I am weak,
And my secluded vantage grows increasingly bleak.
If the God I serve remains on His throne,
Why do I always feel so alone?
.
Shamed by failure desperate from strife
I’ve had enough; please take my life.
Funny that yesterday, in terror, I should run
From threat to a life that today I would shun.
But, oh! I am worn down to my bones.
Aching for respite, my thinning soul groans.
Too listless to move or even to weep,
My eyes drift closed in fitful sleep.
.
Sometimes despair gets the better of me
That day I was lost, and lost I would be,
Had things been different, ‘neath that broom tree.
I might never have roused had He not come for me.
But in that blessed, hot, impossible bread,
More than an empty stomach was fed.
In a single, unlikely pitcher of water
This helpless sheep was spared the slaughter.
.
It didn’t happen overnight.
Forty days I sulked on Horeb’s height,
Before he reached into my brooding.
“Oh, Elijah, what are you doing?”
In truth, I told Him I’d been zealous,
For the sake of His name had been jealous.
But, for all my personal and costly trouble,
His chosen people stray and stumble.
.
He could have left me at anytime,
Could have hidden from me the sublime.
The wind came up in terrible might,
The earth trembled; fires raged bright.
All the fury of a storm amassing,
All that chaos raging against His passing,
Couldn’t produce enough noise
Could not drown out that still, small voice.
.
“Elijah, what are you doing here?”
Out of that isolated cave, He drew me near.
Always, He is lifting my head,
Calling, speaking for my daily bread.
His Spirit and blood daily suffices
Never leaving me to my own devices.
The communion He served that day in my sleep,
Declares no soul so weak that He cannot keep.
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