EXILE
on reading 1 & 2 Kings
Like the ancients, we know about ashes,
and smoldering ruins,
and collapse of dreams,
and loss of treasure,
and failed faith,
and dislocation,
and anxiety, and anger, and self-pity.
For we have watched the certitudes and
entitlements
of our world evaporate.
Like the ancients, we are a
mix perpetrators,
knowing that we have brought this on
ourselves, and a
mix of victims,
assaulted by others who rage against us.
Like the ancients, we weep in honesty at a world lost
and the dread silence of your absence.
We know and keep busy in denial, but we know.
Like the ancients, we refuse the ashes,
and watch for newness.
Like them, we ask,
“Can these bones live?”
Like the ancients, we ask,
“Is the hand of the Lord shortened,
that the Lord cannot save?”
Like the ancients, we ask,
“Will you at this time restore what was?”
And then we wait:
We wait through the crackling of fire,
and the smash of buildings
and the mounting body counts,
and the failed fabric of
medicine and justice and education.
We wait in a land of strangeness,
but there we sing, songs of sadness
songs of absence,
belatedly songs of praise,
acts of hope
gestures of Easter,
gifts you have yet to give.
Walter Brueggemann
Prayers for a Privileged People
Abingdon Press (2008) $19.00