A Psalm For A Less Rugged Heart

Here, have a beer and read this poem that I wrote about how I see God.

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YHWH,

You are the Author of my life,  

the Breath of my lungs, 

the One who called creation good

 the One who called me creation.

You wrote my story,

 You breathed my breath,

 You called me good 

 long before i learned to question Your heart.

Yet i have transformed You 

into someone i do not believe

You intended me to know.

i do not doubt Your existence, 

but i do not believe Your nearness.

i believe that You create beauty, 

i trust that You take Your time, 

 it is not a mystery that You mean what You say.

Yet i imagine that once Your work is finished, 

You step back into silence, 

watching from the heavens 

while the earth stumbles beneath its own weight.

Through my eyes, 

Jesus walks the dusty roads. 

He sits with the broken. 

He enters suffering without hesitation. 

He is gentle enough for children 

and strong enough for the cross.

But You… O God

Too often i have seen You 

as the quiet

watching eye

in the distance. 

Holy,

Powerful,

Good, 

yet

somehow removed.

Your Son comes running toward me 

while You remain seated, 

observing what unfolds.

Forgive me, Yahweh, 

if i have unknowingly separated 

what heaven has never divided.

i confess that my heart 

has found it easier to love the face of Jesus 

than to rest beneath the gaze of the Father.

Even though i say with my mouth, 

that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

are One, 

my soul still keeps them apart.

my mind agrees with the mystery, 

but my heart has not yet entered it.

The same as a rocky mountain climb,

 the landscape of my heart

has become hard,

 daunting,

 rugged.

Yahweh, 

in Your kind and gentle ways, 

i'm asking that You reveal to me 

the pieces of my heart 

that i have pretended to be healed 

but actually need to be peeled.

Peel away the stories 

that pain has written about You.

Peel away the disappointment 

that has become my lens.

Peel away every wound 

that taught me the Father

is farther away than the Son.

If i have mistaken Your patience for distance, 

correct my vision.

If i have mistaken Your silence for indifference, 

teach me to hear Your voice.

If i have mistaken Your love for apathy, 

 wrap my heart in a gentle touch. 

If i have believed that Jesus is kinder than You, 

show me the Father's kindness 

shining through the face of Christ.

If i have imagined that You simply ✨watch✨ 

while Jesus carries the burden, 

remind me that the God who sent His Son into the world 

is not untouched by love.

Teach me that Your holiness 

is not coldness.

That Your sovereignty 

is not detachment.

That Your transcendence 

does not compete

with Your tenderness.

Let me see that the hands of Jesus 

are the hands of the Father

reaching for me.

Let me believe that the Spirit who dwells 

is not a lesser comfort, 

but Your own presence 

breathing life into rugged places.

Search me, 

not to expose me, 

but to free me.

Peel away every false image 

until only Your face remains.

i don’t only want better thoughts about You.

i want to know You.

Not the God i have constructed from fear, 

from disappointment, 

from fake-healed wounds, 

but the God who I hear you have been.

the Father

whose mercy gave His Son,

the Son

who perfectly reveals His Father,

the Father

who writes poems,

 and calls them souls.

the Son

whose soul was written

as the punch line of eternity.

and the Holy Spirit 

who makes that love known 

within the deepest canyons of my heart.

When the peeling is finished, 

let my worship no longer rise 

from obligation or speculation, 

but from wonder and from awe.

May i look upon You and recognize

that You have always been 

far kinder, 

far gentler, 

and far nearer 

than i

have ever dared believe.

Amen.