Something poetic about the Bible

The Bible is a storm. 

The text is a struggle of words

thrust into the shape of myriad stories.

Hail and high winds batter the reader 

with the confounding mystery of God 

and his recalcitrant, lovely people.

Just when I think my boat will soon be swamped

the scene settles, the teaching makes sense,

illuminating a dark corner of my heart,

and I glimpse love hurtling my way

then gathering me up like a lamb in the 

consoling, strong arms of the shepherd.

I sleep soundly until a parable wakes me

and rockets me roughly into disorienting 

paradox where I see an image of myself

as if in a funhouse mirror - long, windswept face,

distant eyes, my smile curled out of shape.

Oddly, all the nonsense makes sense of my incongruent life

and the strangeness of being in a body on a quick spinning planet, 

the cutting edge of 14 billion years of growth, grace, death, and silence 

expanding into something, all of it, all of me and all of you, sacred and holy.

I know I belong in the storm of the bible.

I am a character in the unfolding story, 

my deepest hope to become tenderhearted,

then catch fire, consumed in the tempest

I want to be a living flame of love, Christ’s own forever.