Subtitle: A biblical poetic meditation
Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud,
be gracious to me and answer me!
“Come,” my heart says, “seek His face!”
Your face, Lord, do I seek.
Psalm 27.7-8
My soul thirsts for God, the living God…
My tears have been my food day and night.
Psalm 42.2a, 3a
Let us approach the throne of grace with boldness that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Hebrews 4.16).
Jesus told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow…” (Matthew 13.3)
Thus saith the Lord: “As rain and snow come down from heaven, and do not return until they water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so my word that goes forth from my mouth shall not return to me empty, accomplishing that which I purpose” (Isaiah 55.10-11).
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What do You want me to do, Lord?
With faith’s boldness, I seek Your face.
I come, I cry before Your throne of grace,
begging Your mercy,
bidding You withhold from us the miseries of this world
that would and do make our tears our only food.
Still, whirling they come,
in woeful, withering plenty
as torrential rains hard to endure,
for, as the whole Earth groans,
there is no shelter sure;
no not one
not for anyone.
These days and weeks and months (years to come?),
by an invisible virus
many suffer,
their numbers, as sea swells, rise,
then, at wave’s crest, torn asunder,
brought down to death’s dust.
Those stricken, battle for breath
under caregivers’ eyes, all who wield life-saving hands,
but taxed beyond the bounds of endurance,
laboring, these days and weeks and months,
surpassing the stretch of human strength,
or the reach of refreshing rest
whilst elective authorities with careless callousness,
in the calculus of economy versus longevity,
oft choose livelihoods over lives.
What will I do, Lord?
I know!
For trusting still in Your Presence and Power,
I pray You continue to grace us with the gift of Your Word,
which You, the Sower, scatter everywhere –
abundantly, abandonedly –
on soil shallow, rocky, thorny, and good.
For You know that Your seed alway,
somewhere,
somehow,
in someone
flowers;
fulfilling Your purpose
that we, fed by the bread of Your Love and Justice,
be, become doers of Your Love and Justice,
for only through us Your Love and Justice are done.
Amen
© 2020 PRA
occasional observations of mind and heart, soul and spirit 
Paul,
Printed this last night! Read it again this morning before my workout! It’s given me new life!
I believe God’s seed in me fell on good soil… maybe not a first but I’ve found my way to flowering the world one soul at a time!!
This crazy time we are in requires that we hold on to God more than we ever have before! If we do that we will come out of all our current miseries more faithful than ever!
Much love!
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Indeed, Loretta, I believe you are good soil. Tho’ I hasten to add that one of the problematic aspects of we humans seeking to interpret the Parable of the Sower is that we can get caught up in trying to determine the character or kind of another person’s soil! Therefore, in my view, you’ve applied Jesus’ teaching rightly, for you only speak of and for yourself.
As for the rest of what you have written, a couple of thoughts with which I wrestle daily – and several times daily…
“This crazy time we are in requires that we hold on to God more than we ever have before!” I believe that, too. Indeed, tho’ this prayer-poem begins, “What do you want me to do, Lord?”, the fact…the truth is that I call out to God for I believe God exists.
That said, to your point, “If we do that we will come out of all our current miseries more faithful than ever!”, I pray that is so. For in my wrestling, I’m oft torn. On the one hand, I have faith/trust/confidence in God’s – as I write in the prayer-poem – “Presence and Power” (or, in other words, God’s existence and benevolence). On the other hand, in the face of all that is wrong and broken and evil in this world, I wonder whether God exists and, in that wonderment, whether God is a human construct (no novel thought or idea here, but rather one that’s been around as long as humans have existed) to pacify our worrying about all that is wrong and broken and evil that has no resolution in this life.
Concerning your “flowering the world one soul at a time!!”, carry on!
Love
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