THE WONDER AND THE WITCH

IT IS TIME TO SEEK THE LORD

As the world winds its wicked way
In tortures of blazing heat,
Its heart a devastation,
Its mind robustly robotic,
Its thoughts in consternation
With plastic consolation
Wrought with chemistry
Misnamed therapy -
The gods of bestiality at its heels
The glamour of iridescent morals
About its throat -
Like an aged witch
Pretending to be a fairy -
History develops like a strongman.

With culture's tentacles outstretched
More like the tentacles of an octopus
Than the arms of a child -
Our luxuriating fairy,
Alias wanton witch,
Kisses each tentacle
With glazing eyes,
Feeling nicely surrounded
With a naturalistic inverse
Which - though blown to billions of bits,
Or spewed into abysmal unknowns,
Is here! Hers to know and to exploit.

With prophetic precision
Our witch cavorts, contorts,
Disports herself
Under the unseeing eyes
Of the heaven God made,
Crying coyly - or
Anon plaintively
For company in her sport
Of creating havoc with hearts,
Seducing the young and
Using God's creation of a mind
As a format for being blind.

Anguished nations,
Political amputations,
Genocides so popular,
Atrocities a norm,
Hypocrisy hallowed,
Conscience mellowed,
For a mêlée
Of doomed misunderstandings
Reinforced by greed,
Insane social egotisms,
Personal aggrandisements:
These are as a savoury
For the main course
Which she can only imagine,
Though she has eaten
Fare like it
Before...
The Lord is not mocked
By her witcheries,
Nor does He savour her stew.
Unlocked doors open effortlessly,
Oiled with blood - that of Christ the Lord,
As Lady Culture pursues her angst,
Anon accompanied by her
Counterpart in spiritual
Crime, Lady Spiritual Culture,
Festooned with tradition
Like pearls, red with
The blood of martyrs:
But there she goes,
With shampooed hair
Her way to The End.
As to her:
Babylon is her archetype *¹,
History gathered in her tresses,
With one of its faces,
Rome
with her descendants,
her allies,
sympathisers
and her children *².

Alas for them!

A good book , asks Lady Culture,
This world ?
Surely plenty in it for all -
But this she will not know,
That this is mere wrapping :
The contents of His Book,
The Book that rules
Are finished -
These two millenia,
Now almost completed,
Have watched them,
With largely unseeing eyes.

God has spoken - no more to say,
To this race till The End.
Heedless headiness
Ignores God's voice,
Despises His words,
Which for all that
Fulfil themselves
Untempered,
Unalloyed,
Unallayed,
With the routine assurance
Of a dentist
Investigating your teeth.

Where the decay,
The spiritual decay
Is,
It is:
And the results are what they are.

Rottenness smells
In the form of an opened abscess,
And the word of God
Opens the mouth of man
To inspect it -
That mouth so often
Silent to God,
In multitudes innumerable;
Or addressing its Maker,
Only with expressions
Of blasphemy,
Cultural occlusion,
Indifference, contempt.
With that divine name,
Freely and frequently
It exhibits -
In a quisling's calumny
And patricidal passion -
A preference for idols,
In the heart, the soul,
The mind, the spirit.

Today -
In these idols,
Often made with paper,
Such words are printed,
Their spokespersons
Speak on TV
And frequently
MUST be immoral...
To satisfy implicit lust.
They may seem religious,
They may be blatant,
But they must have lust,
Intemperate...

Uncommandeered,
Free as air to satisfy whatever
It wills :
Making in imagination
But never in reality,
Makers of man in maniacal fiascos
That never grace this globe,
Or create one single fact:
Themselves
'Made by nothing':
Emptiness
And confusion
Their rule.
 

It is God and love
Of His created conditions,
Organised and arranged,
Instructed, counselled, told ...
OR ELSE printed idols,
Perhaps with protoplasm as a
Screen,
With eye shadow
And noble moments
Fecklessly, recklessly, vainly set as if
To atone debauchery of the souls:
That are lost.

These are the ways - there are two!

The Lord of Life
Has used
Only one language
In organising our bodies,
Only one testimony
Of the KINDS He has created,
And only one Book
In directing our eyes
To His word.
He has sent
Only One Son
In setting a standard for sacrifice,
and providing
Only One Sacrifice
To cover the penitent
Who long for mercy,
and find
Only One Eternal Life,
Their desideratum,
Their delight
and His gift.
That is - like God,
Infinite in its purity,
Immeasurable in its love,
Incalculable in its Power:
It is His, and
He gives it as I John 1 tells us.

The bestowal ? *3
It is called the grace of the Gospel.
Its crux, the Cross
Of Calvary is the only
Alternative to a crucified universe:
A hell-hole as instalment
For everlasting contempt.
His name who made.

The sacrifice ?

Jesus Christ.
His requirement?

You - unvarnished,
No eyes shadowed,
The cultural idols dashed -
Repentant and with realism,
Returning to your God,
To His narrow way,
Where your Guide,
Counsellor, kind Friend
Has infinite breadth,
And depth as well,
Conducting you
Who are His
To your destiny: Himself.
His place ?
Higher than the heavens.
Where can you meet ?
The earth, to which He came,
Where He will return,
Where His free Spirit is Sent
As a gift to His people who know Him.

"Be reconciled to God!" -
He calls over the blood
Of His Son's central sacrifice,
The Just for the Unjust,
To bring us to God.

Is your eye opened ?
Can it see ?
He made Him to be sin
Who knew no sin,
That in Him
We might be made
The righteousness of God *⁴.

If you come,
You're covered.
If you don't,
You never were.
Transactional analysis:
Your sin for His,
His righteousness to be yours
As a pardoning gift;
To which is added
A dynamic, transforming vitality
Of a surgically changed heart *⁵
In which lives
This same Lord Jesus Christ
By His Spirit *⁶.

The universe ticks
As if responding to a music,
To its appointed destination:
For us who believe, His irrepressible harmony;
The other way -
the cacophony without conductor,
Fitting
For reckless, radical recalcitrance,
One teeming with just rebuke *⁷

Is life to be yours?
Or are you,
A culturally captive city,
To abide blind ...
Till your place is amazed ashes;
Your desires
Twisted from your captured spirit,
Even while your city disintegrates:
Your spirit justly awaiting the judgment
Of that God who made you,
And whom you ignored -
Except perhaps for presumptuous
Deals based on nothing
But vanity.
It is victory or vanity,
Delusion or God!

He has left nothing
To chance,
And nothing will
Those gain who
Trust it!

In Him there is confidence
As there was creation.
Without Him,
There will be the desolation
Of deceit *⁸.

Come! He says, to Me:
I will not cast you out! *⁹
And let him who is athirst
Come*¹⁰.
And whosoever will,
Let him take the water of life
Freely.
 
 
 

Notes:

IT IS TIME
TO SEEK THE LORD.
WHERE THE LORD IS,
THERE IS SAFETY!