The story of Zion.

As you breathe and the leaves fall,  Yellow islands on green seas, So too do my walls fall  As I inhale your love for me  Cradled in silence  Comforted by mercy  Your face emerges  When I stop speaking   When I stop moving  Constructing myself  Returning to the child  I hid so well  Your arms around me Laying in bed  Doing nothing  A heartbeat in my chest  Doing the holy work  Of keeping me alive  What I do is nothing  What I breathe in, is life

Leaves fall in the reflection of my glasses Swaying in silence Matching the trees in the window What is the work of a child? A child is a pillow A companion for rest A child sleeps And is carried in from the car A child stares out the window During long drives Watching the grass fall and rise As you pass the hillside A child provides the joy necessary To appreciate the chicken wings At the restaurant A child makes ordinary things Into little worlds, all their own A child spea

Like a cobweb’s lacy overlay  Over a knobby trunk So too is your word  My filter, my guidebook When my focus rests too far The ugliness pervades  Only faintly, there are lines  Tracing boundaries for each place  Make them easier to swallow  When the picture swallows me  The truth illuminated  By whispered lines you've revealed Treat me not in accordance with my lack of faith  But by your abundant heart  Whose riches drip off the words of life  That you speak  Through the line

I carried that prison  Right into the wilderness  That’s why it was so miserable  I found comfort in the slavery  Freedom in forced labour  Now I don’t know what my muscles are for  And where do I go?  And who are you, really?  The God over my slave years  The God who freed me  Who are you now?  Is that who you’ve always been?  The God who let me be enslaved  Is the same God who freed me  Being free’s not as easy as I thought  I hate the choices, hate the endless cost  Disapp

It’s a white sheet of printer paper  Equal canvas for a to-do list or crayons  It’s jazz  Dancing like chaos in my ears But finding perfect order as I lean in  It’s light  And I know the light is fleeting It only graces me with friendship for a few short hours  A few short hours with permission to be productive  And they always slip away  It’s a fading dream And I swore I filled my mind with visions of a fertile future  But at present, it’s weeds and soil and my unskilled han

Brewing another cup  In my mundane little home  It’s nothing to see, really  Limescale and peeling paint  It’s the last of the teabags  I bought in Japan  A relic of a time  When money flowed and freedom felt feelable  Doubt put cracks in that pretty picture  So beautiful how the lines came together  Now the future is nothing  The words the formed the story of that old life have ceased The silence was shocking It forced me to listen  And each day is just that, a day  No longe

How faithful you are. Your kindness steals words from my lips. It’s beyond words. When my own life’s destruction is magnified in my eyes and the blood on my hands leaves deep stains I can’t wash away, you say,  Try again.  When my heart is tenderised like meat under a mallet and it’s my own mind replaying pain in a thousand different ways, you say,  Try again.  Like a father, lifting me from the ground, assessing my scratches, bandaging me up and placing me back on the bike. 

Those streams that once glittered with gold  Have dried up.  Maybe we found all they had to offer. Maybe you cut the supply. But they’re barely a trickle of muddy water now, nothing like the clear, crisp springs that winked with gold twinkling just below the surface. No life is sustained by them now. They’re drying up.  And this land, which holds so much life, has changed so profoundly in such a short time. The sunset’s colours changed. What the plants need is different. The

How many times do I need to worship things my hands made, before I learn how it ends?  Why do I strive to see, and feel, and control, so I can craft, and shape, and mold The objects of my affection?  Wanting to put reins on a wild God and control Him.  You slip through my fingers so I search for what I can grasp,  Always my hands, making me make heartbreak with sand.  Why does it have to be what I can see,  When to see you is to be healed from blindness?  And to feel you is t