If the Word Wrote a Letter

Inspired by Revelation 1-3

As I read and pondered the letters to the seven churches, I was struck by the description of Jesus in Revelation 1:12-16 - eyes like fire, voice like a roaring river, and a sword coming from His mouth. I started to imagine what it would be like if the letters themselves carried some of that immeasurable power.

The poem really has two parts. The first six stanzas paint a picture of our range of experiences reading God’s Word - from the times it hits us with its immediacy and goodness, to the times we hold onto our Bibles desperately, our only source of light when everything else seems dark. The remaining stanzas might seem odd (is it blasphemous to think of God’s Word as terrifying?), but we do well to reflect on the implication that God has chosen to speak to us.

The closing line is a reminder that it is only once His Word and Spirit have begun to do their work in us that the same life and power will come flowing out of our lives for the world to see. 

Word has it the Word wrote a letter,
and its pages crackle like thunder –
not the kind that reverberates
right beyond the horizon line,
some giant’s stomping steps kicking off
the dust of whatever town you’re in.

I’m talking about that bone-deep boom,
when all the room between you
and this world’s heaven-haunted wildness
withdraws, leaving you to wonder if it’s
the storm or you doing all that shaking.

And in that moment of palpable sound,
the paragraphs pour from cloudburst buckets,
rushing rapid on their way to meet
desiccated, desecrated ground.

As the long-deserted dirt looks up to see
the sea dissected into a million pinprick prisms,
each refracting a rainbow of could-be covenants,
it waits – for what on earth can dead dirt do but
wait, and hope it will be ready to receive the rain?

Now we read, every lowercase-w word
a breadcrumb to guide us when we come
stumbling down another lantern-lit passage
with wolves howling at our heels and 
the warm hearth of home is nothing more
than the premise of a promise,
one we dare not whisper even to ourselves;

Still, each molecular morsel is a reminder that
we do not wander through these woods alone -
and if we are being led on by all these
blessed and broken fragments of a once and future feast,
well, come to find we’re also being chased,
not by the devil’s dogs, but by the Hound of Heaven.

Word has it the Word wrote a letter, and it terrifies me –
because this Word, the Word, is not content
to just be heard like so much birdsong in the background
of our drawn and quartered attention spans. 
But like thunder in our bones or a wafer on the tongue, 
He will overrun our senses and shatter our defenses
on His way to stake His claim on depths
we didn’t know we had.

And the Word’s words? They just might wound us 
on their way to make us well. After all,
the gardener’s shovel must be a torment to the topsoil – 
but that humus, hacked to pieces, will birth a harvest come summer.
And don’t the Lion’s claws hurt like hell as they rip through
serpent’s flesh to reveal the brand new man who waits inside?

So I am terrified, yes, but I am grateful to know that
the Word will have His way with us until He’s
battered down the boulder of our hearts and turned
that tomb into a womb once more.Then, and only then,
will He come rushing like water out again.