The Holy Word

Had He not spoken
(The Word, the word)
Then I had not known
God of the Word.
Had He not spoken
Creation were not,
And I, and all things.
  
Sometimes in the maze
Of men’s brilliant words
I feel alone like a crow
On a barren desert,
A cryless pitch
Of sterile nothingness.
  
I hear the word, read,
See them in their lines,
Am damned and doubted
About all things.
Despair plucks at my mind,
Baffled I am
By such brilliance.
  
Still starves the heart within,
Still wanders the aching mind,
Where the flighting thought
Flashes like cracked lightning
On the dark covered reaches
Of my puny comprehension.
  
That is when the heart cries,
The spirit panting
Lifts hapless, helpless wings,
Longing for the flight
That befits true spirit.
The word of man shrivels
Like parched peas
On massive seared granite.
  
Not so the true Word.
It is refreshing rain
On the arid reaches,
Warm sun on the shivered prairies
And bleak uplands. It breaks
In rhythmic joy, filling
The hungered, quenching the dry,
Bringing rivulets of sheer refreshment.
  
How can God speak—
However He may speak—
And the delight not come? True, the fear
May well precede delight,
But the truth liberates,
Setting free the bound mind,
The awkward phrase,
And breaks the chains
Of human hermeneutic,
Mind’s priestcraft
And denial of the living Logos.



From All Things of the Spirit, by Geoffrey C. Bingham, pp. 5-6.