Stranded

Take this week’s strains

of our cold and broken hallelujahs

and braid them into a cord that is

both soft enough and strong enough

to support all of creation.

Pull this world back from its dangerous swing –

not over the imaginary fiscal cliff that has turned

national leaders into party puppets

behaving like petty junior-high kids –

but the precarious swing of lost innocence

over the chasm of unimaginable violence

in China, Las Vegas, Kansas City, Oregon, and Connecticut,

just to name a few headline-grabbers,

not even mentioning the senseless deaths

that occur daily around the world.

Help us step back from all that we have tightly squeezed

as sacred and true and ask the Immanuel questions:

“What does it mean to live, not as if

we’ve got it all figured out, under control,

and are fully operating according to God’s plan,

but rather to live as those whose faith

mortars the vast expanse between

tiny bricks of understanding?”

“What does it mean to live

‘Immanuel’ – God with us?”

© 2012 Todd Jenkins