Grace Unabridged

Public domain photo: Cute Baby Lamb - George Hodan

The majority of this poem came to me one afternoon over the summer. We were driving through a beautiful valley at the foot of the Rocky Mountains on our way to a conference. I hadn't drove through here since last year, and I was thinking about where God had brought me since then. Which started me thinking about where He has brought me in life thus far. I am struck with the beauty of grace and how God gives it so generously. His grace is unabridged.

Shame blankets like quiet icy snow,

Claustrophobic suffocation,

Paralyzing sounds of life beneath its heaviness.

But God. Deception unmasked by the truth,

Stripping away delusions in order to heal;

Facades exposed by life stronger than death.

Shame silences desperation,

Drowning under the waves with silent screams,

Hands clawing the surface searching for air.

But God. Marvelous grace as far as the east is from the west,

Love unmeasured, boundless, free;

Silent lips set free in joyful songs of praise.

Shame feeds on helplessness,

Vulnerability compromised,

Gaining strength on hopelessness.

But God. Restores a hundredfold what has been lost,

Avenges the plight of the helpless,

Shelters bruised reeds beneath His outstretched wings.

Shame masks the senses like medieval armor,

Don’t feel, won’t cry; don’t love, won’t die;

Numb as the living dead.

But God. Eclipsing fear with peace beyond understanding,

Restoring innocence with joy,

Beauty for ashes.

Shame alienates bleeding, broken lambs from the flock

Where wolves prowl, lips quivering,

Anticipating another easy kill.

But God. Sovereign Master of the waves,

Good Shepherd through dark valleys,

A Champion mighty to save.

Shame lures toward a delusion of escape,

A side exit of darkness guarded by creatures of the night

Who follow relentlessly, waiting silently to devour.

But God. Identifies with shame in order to remove it,

With guilt to forgive, with pain to heal,

With nobodies and outcasts to be their everything.

Shame has an iron grip, a scrapyard magnet scraping bottom,

Jagged shrapnel of pain inescapable, sin irreversible;

Silent gunfire reducing sanity to weeping.

But God. Transforming sobbing dust into imperishable gold,

More precious than sparrows, surpassing even the lilies;

Identity that can never fade away.

Shame is a mocking physician, a veritable hypocrite

Prescribing remedies that cost everything;

Infection, endless hemorrhage.

But God. Knowing the need before the request,

Balm of Gilead worth more than diamonds, without cost;

Pain of brokenness re-broken in order to receive rest.

Shame caricatures things that cannot change,

Red and yellow, black and white;

Male and female, tribal spite.

But God. Hearts unfold like flowers before You,

A glorious throng of colorful redemption,

United as one under the banner of the King of kings.

Shame sits alone, ignored by a humanity that shuns the weak,

A slow death from invisibility’s cruel stare,

Masking bloody cuts and silent screams beneath.

But God. Two words that speak life into darkness,

Shattering guilt, interrupting shame,

Touching the outcast without fear.

But God. Two words bridging questions and answers,

Diminishing the past, bright hope for the future;

The last word unabridged in the power of one Word: Jesus.