The days seesaw,
frost overnight and frigid at dawn
bright sun and mild air by late afternoon.
The jacket I needed in the morning feels too heavy after a few hours.
Is nature as confused as I am,
unsure of whether to end hibernation or keep sleeping,
to break open buds or leave them closed tightly awhile longer?
My life unfolds likewise,
seesawing between success and failure
joy and weeping
certainty and ambiguity
meaning and desolation
and I never quite know how to move ahead,
as the steps I take do not often fit the current trend of the seesaw.
Are you a seesaw sort of God,
alternating between grace and damnation,
love and wrath,
help and abandonment?
Or are you forever changing directions to stay alongside us,
tacking to make the best of what we choose and how we live?
And will the goodness and peace we seek, the goodness and peace you promise,
ever come about through all the seesawing?
Amen.
* * * * *
I want you to remain ever the same,
to be the one constant in my life
the rock that never changes.
I want you to upend everything,
to be the agent of change,
the new event transforming all.
I want it both ways with you.
I want you to be the precise God I need at any moment.
Then I can trust fully, because then you are predictable and under control.
I suppose I do not really want you to be God at all,
not God by any actual definition of God,
but just one more human device to be manipulated by human desire.
Because if you are God,
then all bets are off and I have no idea what you might do.
Can I live with you as God?
* * * *
There are no halfway measures with you, God:
with you, it is all or nothing.
You judge harshly those who make a halfway commitment,
go halfway down the path,
move through life half-heartedly.
I suppose you can see, with your God’s-eye view,
how short our time on earth will be
and are intent that we not waste any of it,
that we plunge fully into living every moment.
I suppose you yourself are a passionate God,
giving yourself without holding back to whoever you love, whatever you do,
and you want us to follow your example.
But what about our uncertainties, our fears of what might happen?
Do you not forget how you can anticipate everything
and we can anticipate only a tiny part of what may come?
You tell us to trust you and step out,
to believe you will keep us from falling,
to expect the water will hold us up and we will not drown.
Hard words, those words, when I see others fall around me, hear the cries of the drowning,
and try to know that I will not join them if I keep my eyes on you.
All-or-nothing God,
be patient with me
give me a moment to hesitate
and keep calling in that voice so alluring I cannot not reach for it, for you.
Amen.