My Heart and God

A poetic Eastertide meditation on my hope in the resurrection…

Whenever our hearts condemn us…God (Who) is greater than our hearts…knows everything. Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God (1 John 3.20-21; my emendations)

Wilt Thou forgive that sin, where I begun,
Which is my sin, though it were done before?
From A Hymn to God the Father, verse 1 (1623), John Donne (1573-1631)

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My heart of undying memory,
(in league with the sure-and-stern-handed clutch of my conscience)
doth condemn the living me
(“J’accuse, j’accuse!” I hear my heart cry)
playing, parading before my mind’s eye,
bringing anew to the scaffold of just-penalty
scenes of my past sins
of omission, when I didst not do what I ought, and
of commission, when I didst do what I ought not.

Whene’er this occurs
(too oft for my peace),
there neither is nor can be release;
my only relief, ‘tis to trust,
to rest
in the hope of the mercy of God,
Who alway is greater than mine own e’er-present censure.

Thus, with Donne, I can and will sing:

I have a sin of fear that when I’ve spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
Swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son
Shall shine as He shines now, and heretofore.
And having done that, Thou hast done,
I fear no more.