At church today, the pastor spoke from Luke 15. His message brought up new truths I hadn't thought of before that God used to teach me the same lesson He's been teaching me for a while, because it apparently is taking a long time to sink in.
Anyway, the sermon also reminded me of this poem I wrote a while back. It's spoken word, so it doesn't translate perfectly into text, but here you are anyway. It's very simply entitled "Prodigal." You know, sometimes I feel like that man in the story/ shoveling pig slop to swine, wishing the whole time that I was dining on a dish as fine as that./ 'Cause the taste in my mouth is the bitterness of doubt left over from chasing after the lustful illusion of wealth/ wondering if I was wrong to disown my own father/ and take ownership of this mother-ships life course. The self-elected captain of this cabin/ calling the shots without counting the cost of my own reckless extravagance/ spending bits of my own soul sowing seeds in whatever the world tells me is worthy/ ending only in my poverty. But His sovereignty keeps me praising a prodigal God whose generosity provides despite my hearts animosity. Cause my heart was lost, you see/ Chasing the dreams that my mind schemed/ Thinking that words on a page or a screen were the key so that I wouldn’t feel so lonely/ Purposefully filling my mind with the world’s darkness, turning day into night/ Because without the light, you can’t see how much it hurts, right?/ I mean, isn’t that how it works, right?/ We hold on tight to the things that make us feel alright/ in spite of the fact that it’s harder to get through each day and night/ We’re broken kites. Unable to fly because our broken crosses keep us collapsing/ We say we’ll change but we’re relapsing back on old patterns/ thinking that we don’t need anyone to save/ I call it “independence.”/ Others call it being “brave”/ But either way it’s the same. It’s our pride and our shame that keep us from calling out to the Creator who breathed out our names. And that’s insane Because the Lord’s protection is freely given/ He says, “When he calls to me, I will answer him/ Away from her, all evil will be driven because I protect the ones that love me; the ones I call my children.”/ And that’s what we are! Adopted children of God. So if the Creator of the cosmos has chosen to adopt us/ and spread his heavenly winged protection atop us/ then who are we to say “No thanks, God; I got this.” We look at ourselves as a prodigal son or daughter/ forgetting the whole time that we have a prodigal father/ One who has spent everything—to save us/ Whose reckless extravagance, extraordinary when he exercised his graciousness to exorcise our lowliness/ His showmanship displayed in the culmination of the greatest love story ever written/ when his only Son descended for the purposes of death and resurrection/ A reconciliation initiated by the one who could rightly throw us out of heaven/ Too sinful to stand his presence, he presents us with the present of our present salvation/ gift wrapped and freely given if we only turn toward him/ So brothers and sisters, why wallow in your sin? Rachel Fruit and Labor
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