3/2/2020 (wilderness)
Maybe not everyone will like this - a poem in first person about Jesus being tempted in the wilderness. I even think I carry on a bit too much in it to try to emphasis that, yes heās human but also yes, heās God - but I tried to stop imagining some church lady going off at me for heresy and instead focus on the Yeshua in the desert and what that would be like. I was inspired by the sermon my pastor gave last Sunday - link here - I had a small vision of Yeshua saying that he went through more than just dying to be close to us and then I just kinda went off from there.
Anyway. Here it is:
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Forty days is a long time.
For thirty years I have been
Constrained by human days,
I have sweated under the sun I created -
But never more so than now,
Out here in the wilderness.
I both know, and donāt know, why Iām here.
Lucifer is here. I can smell him before I see him.
He is both before the eyes of God
And whispering in the back of this human mind;
Which is my mind. I have known,
Always, of course, what this is like for my children and yet -
I have also not known, I am experiencing everything
Within the limits of humanity and time
So, when he tells me to make bread out of rocks
I donāt brush him aside.
My stomach turns over in hunger.
I am hungry, I am tempted forĀ
The first time - I do not have
Many first, except in these last thirty years there have been
A lot of them - first scraped knee,
First stubbed toe, first sunburn,
First stomach ache - I have alwaysĀ
Felt every hurt and tear of my children, but
Never like this. Through my own body, not through knowing theirs.
And nothing, nothing has hurt like this:
This desire to make bread.
Even though I know:
āMan does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.ā
Still, I want bread.
The human wants things immediately,
Fully, in one moment summed up and
Finished. Lucifer is both
Squirming in the presence of Holy
And also delighted to watch my agony
As the humanness of me
Wants to see Godās glory revealed
All at once, in a magnificent show
So that all may know! All at once and forever!
That I am God, and He is me.
I know what is ahead of me.
The struggle. The disbelief.
The years of walking and talking and
Not being heard.
I have lived for thirty human years now,
Seperated from Abba, and it never ceases to
Ache; there are so many days filled with the longing to
Go home. Donāt I know what is ahead?
They will look me in the face and
Not know me.
Havenāt I warred with their souls for
Thousands of years? I am used to it
By now, yet the ache takes over my body.
I want the easy and the quick,
The loud and bright and painless -
Even though I know:
āDo not put the Lord your God to the test.ā
And yet - I want to test Abba, the Spirit, myself.
The Spirit beats inside even as I picture it -
Donāt I know what angels look like?
So, I can picture them catching me.
A heavenly view of all the earth.
I am insulted by his question,
It is impossible for me to break the Godhead,
To join the dark -
But more than this I am angered
At the jolt of my heart.
I am angered that he puts my children through
These feelings, this welling up happening
Inside my flesh - that he has so much power
Over their bodies, that he has so many backdoors
Into their minds - yes, they chose death,
I remember, I was there.
They are the reason the body Iām inĀ
Wears out, breaks down;
They are the reason the sun I created
Feels to them too hot -
And yet - and yet.
I shout in anger:
āWorship the Lord your God, and him only!ā
And that, finally, is too much for him,
And his task is done anyway;
He goes back to where he came from.
But even as the angels gather
I weep with tears my body is too parched
To create, for I have felt
The daily! Strong! Beguiling!
Temptations of the a human
Within a fallible human body and
If I were not also God, I know -
If I had not been filled with the Spirit, I know -
Well. I know what it is like.
To want to say yes.
I have been in the wildernessĀ
That my children created, eons ago,
For forty days, which is a long time;
And I have suffered in the body
That they cursed, for forty days,Ā
Which is a long time;
And I have felt the devil in my mind.
I have felt the weakness of the human heart,
The confusion of the human mind,
The doubt of the human soul.
And I weep for the children
That give in, and blame themselves,
Instead of the dark.Ā
Because they are not the dark.
For all their daily curses, they are only light,
For I am the one that created them, I name them -
I have created them in light,
I have called them by names of light -
Oh child, my child, you are my child and
You are only light.
















