“Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat,
but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail;
and you, when once you have turned back,
strengthen your companions.”
—Luke 22.31-32
Our hardest challenge is still to come:
all we trust, in crisis; all we love, at risk.
He knows our follies and our frailty.
But the Beloved is not demanding;
no, the One who holds the stars
is praying for us, lending us his heart.
For even as we fail, sustained
by strength that’s not our own,
we’re called to carry on.
He holds our imperfections
and our gross defections
in already nail-scarred hands,
and bids us strengthen one another
for the road ahead, with love
to contradict the Powers that harm.
It’s likely we shall know that harm
and suffer some, be sifted clean of all
we grasp and all we love but love.
And yet the one who’s sifted with us
still remains, and bears our scars,
and with forgiveness grants us grace
to witness and to serve and guide each other,
lifted in his love that now is ours,
fine-sifted, then, made pure and whole and strong.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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