In Letters to Malcom C.S. Lewis writes, “The truth is, I haven’t any language weak enough to depict the weakness of my spiritual life. If I weakened it enough it would cease to be language at all.”
And in a few moments, I’m silenced . . .
Well, just a few seconds . . . till like you, I’m lifted once again by the light and lavender of nouns and verbs, their ability to pluck me right out of my kitchen and my self and take me across town. And so I keep writing.
Yes, it’s rare and not necessarily a picture of what is going on inside me, but I do find myself considering the power of Jesus’s words. Not just their power to encourage or convict (or maybe inspire a poem), but their actual power to do something.
I mean, imagine if you had been underground during the resurrection of a fellow friend of the graveyard . . .
You’d know, some words are far from weak.
(Thank you to As Surely as the Sun which first published this poem in Issue 9 of their lovely literary journal: Read original here)
To Lazarus When he called your name we couldn’t rise— Come out! alone, two words could have cracked all our caves, all our cries echoed through these crypts. But he called your name, Lazarus and we remain under ground Come out! alone, two words could have lifted us from the forsaken soils of slept centuries. He might have sobbed seas that spilled over earth’s edge, sinking these tombs but instead, for you He wept his tears moistening our graves where we sip on the mist of your name wet words still cried for our sake while we wait beneath the glint of love-rain.