Jesus on water

When I, weary, reflect upon
The longings of the human heart–
Sometimes so far they seem to be,
Like distant land beyond the sea,
Or Pluto’s quiet somnolence beyond
The warmth of Sol’s embrace–
The flight of thoughts
Escape from mind beset
By troubled daily news;
And so in contemplation I
Oft sink into the murky blues.

What hope for man,
When sin and pain abound,
When sorrow seems to know no end,
And oppression ever hounds
The weak, the innocent, the poor;
And those who tend
To others’ needs
Burn out and find their lives
Spread like tattered rugs
upon a boundless floor?
What hope for children who
Have lost their joy and confidence,
Sapped into those tiny screens
By companies and faceless enemies? What hope for lonely souls alone
Treading this world of woe?
Hopeless indeed
it sometimes seems.

Through rumination I conclude
If hope depends on such as me
Then hopeless true
This world would be;
So agrees the preacher
In old Ecclesiaste;
Vanity of vanities! All must be
If all was up to you and me.
So what is there to do?
Throw up the hands,
Lay down the head,
And mourn the gloomy night?
Where now can hope
And future both be found?
Where from wrong
Can we find right?
Where can we, if blind,
Find healing for our sight
And walk together towards
A new day’s light?

But wait, and look:
Do you, too, see
The man upon the waves?
One foot upon the surf,
The other on the clouds of power;
A rod in hand to strike the nations
And break the corporations
At the judgement hour;
Like potter’s vessels thrown upon the land,
So too will evil break beneath His hand
Still scarred from Calvary’s hill;
Justice and peace writ large upon His thigh
And fiercest love ablaze in piercing eye;
He came to set the captives free–
As captives all in death’s strong hand we
Languish now as in His day if
Trusting not His outstretched hand
We go our separate way–
And with His blood to stay
The wrath of God.

So seeing I, in fear and hope,
Can find the strength for one more day;
For in the Galilean I
Have known fulfilled the promise true
Of hope, and of a future;
Not for me only, but for you too.