An awakening: into steady loss
Dreams escaping into the darkness before dawn
Beloved voice cut short, echoing in the void
To a bereaved daughter, groping
Her way past slumbering husband and child
To a lamplit corner in the pulpit shadow of her father
Cold apparition reaching beyond the grave
Promising all he had failed to give her
Had given to countless others in passing
Like confetti, in deliberate clerical abandon,
Overlooking the child craving him, idolizing
With all the passion of the forgotten lonely.

She sat now in disciplined lamplight
Opening the Scripture chapter by chapter
As if to uncover the key to all mythologies
Of the patriarch, under headstone, after all these years
By her alone lamented, having rested in the peace
He had never thought to reveal to her, to say to her,
That she by grace had a Father who chapter by chapter
Spoke to her His love, a Father who would never fail her.

Many times I think of her
And many times in prayer
Many times I’ve wept for her
Wondering through the years
If she ever heard the still small voice
That called her in the dawn
The voice of our dear Savior
Each day
At 5:30 A.M.

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” (Revelation 3:20 ESV)