Today, I bring you a bit of poetry. It’s a small piece, formed this past evening reflecting on how we, though in Christ and having been given the righteousness of God, still hold ourselves in such scorn sometimes over the tiniest stumble.
i am my own pharisee.
i am my own pharisee.
i have counted the bruises and the scars,
i have tabulated how many stones must be thrown,
and made atonement a game of rule and bastard Law.
i am my own pharisee.
i have lived in gilded sobriety,
have excused my days most dark
and felt profaned over the smallest inflicted mark.
i am my own pharisee.
a hate that festers up within me,
for all the promises made to better be,
dressed in splendor but hung upon Traitor’s tree.
i am my own pharisee.
more than thrice denying the sovereign He,
that Man whose righteousness for me,
in shamed boast i claim to have concealed.
i am my own pharisee,
sinner healed from leprosy,
for eyes do not look to One or freshly wholed hands,
but to the past, but to the damned.
© 2012, Preston. All rights reserved.
