Phillip Medhurst

A Pilgrimage to Truth

Category: Bible

Annunciation

 

As swift as eye-of-reason’s blink

Consent, in waiting, parted lips.

As quick as pulse could leap to beat

Of wing, her cry let fly to air

Where word met Word. Thunder unrolled –

Salvation’s sentence in pursuit

Of spirit’s lightning dart to soul

Pre-hushed. Her heart, inviolate still,

Now known, knew all. So All the valley

Filled, and pure Love’s river swelled,

Then brimmed to shed its tide on time.

 

 

The Sacrifice

 

A sacrifice like Abel’s is required:

No shrieking root torn up,

Or apple plucked and dashed,

But some born thing, with sentience,

Whose face, bewildered by the knife

Will stare as life flows out.

 

That way our God is satisfied,

Reclaiming what he once bestowed,

Maybe, heartless, envying

This creature-kind who lived

And loved the crimson blood too much –

As though it were its own.

 

The Scapegoat

 

Each head, bowed down with several cares

Is raised to watch the sacrifice

Proceed to where Jehovah waits

To host a feast that famishes.

This flock anticipates a goat

That stumbles on the precipice.

We cannot spare our sympathy.

With it bad karma vanishes.

 

Eden

 

Since Adam delved and Eva span

Man’s waywardness has spoiled God’s plan.

Disease and death here level all;

Our winding-sheet conceals a Fall.

Though God could make a bush to speak,

A dumb child tells us who is weak:

Though He made His dead Son to eat,

Yet feeding some would be a feat,

For they can neither dig nor spin,

And day by day their limbs grow thin.

Such is the consequence of sin.