Feminine 101

Foolishness, foolishness, all is foolishness!

What had I to do with my father’s mulishness?

I did not believe the bedtime stories of pharaoh,

Of seas that stand aside, of slaves and their narrow

Escape from Egypt, from demeaning captivity.

I scoffed at their manna, their God’s exclusivity.

If Moses vanished forty days on that height,

Then pursuing other gods seems only right.

.

Still merely a child, I took strides to undo

Every mode of worship my father worked to subdue.

I rebuilt the high place my father tore down.

That not enough, I defiled holy ground.

In the place my father’s God wrote His name,

I raised altars that robbed Him of His fame.

I orchestrated praise to things vile and garish.

I looked on with pride, no thought that I perish.

.

Oh the heights to which that pride carried me!

Heights where only the most blind couldn’t see

The precipice where I so willfully stood,

Roiled and shifted and foretold nothing good.

Those shifting sands I’d heaped at my feet,

Comprised of powers that could not compete.

Odd that I should chase mysteries and might,

Anywhere but the God of my father’s delight.

.

Foolishness! Foolishness and wretched vanity,

That was my undoing, that brought this calamity.

In the dark of my prison, for the first time I see.

A revelation that upholds my whispered plea.

Chosen were we, to bear the name of the LORD,

To proclaim His glory whom I so proudly abhorred.

On my knees by the grace of shackle and hook,

To this wayward sheep they are a Shepherd’s crook.

.

Bow lower, still lower, oh, wandering son.

Feel the crush of shame for evil you’ve done.

I sought forbidden wisdom from the dead.

Whilst ignoring all that the Living hath said.

I placed in His house a god made of stone,

I abased that which is made for Him alone!

It is not the dungeon that paints my needs dire.

Freely I weep for the son I fed to the fire.

.

I grasp that my son’s death by my own hand,

Is an attack on the promise our God has planned.

How could I despise our great Redeemer’s design?

For the Promised One, all of my actions malign.

Foolishness? Foolishness only to the perishing.

And to that end, they are ever disparaging.

But to the ones being humbled in foreign lands,

It cries a salvation only the living understands.

.

By power and might which I do not comprehend,

The God of my fathers has brought me home again.

These walls, this city I see with new eyes,

What He has built I’ll nevermore despise.

Tear down those altars! Oh have you not heard?

Grind the idols to dust in keeping of His Word.

Be gone, thieves of glory, both foreign and fraud!

Cry peace! Give thanks! For He alone is God!

Today’s story is inspired by the story of Manasseh the fallen King of Judah as told primarily in 2 Chronicles 33. For more poetry, visit my poetry page.