Sunday, May 26, 2019

Slow of speech

Slow of speech                                                                                         

How fearful and sad – Moses,
descending from the mountain

aware he could bring down only
God’s words – not (as he had witnessed)

His voice and fire.  God’s living truth
carved rigidly into stone – fixed, deadly,

visible from a thousand different views.
Slow of speech was Moses, his inarticulacy

even more pronounced and urgent
on the twist of his tongue around

the terrible, majestic truth of the God
he had to leave behind

whose presence below would have
broken all commandments, sealed all promises

and set burning His truth
into the hearts of humanity.

How could he explain?  The laws are a method,
a benevolence, a beginning, boundaries along the path

and God is always and already among His people
even though they know Him not.

O child, God conceals Himself in a cloud,
saying, no man sees My face and lives.


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