Six Bright Stars

Holy is your name, LORD of all creation.
You are righteous and true. You are
Merciful to those who call upon you. There are
No other gods, no one else worthy of worship.
Before the beginning—Alpha and
Omega—beyond the ending. Your hand is
Outstretched to save, for you are
Kind and willing to forgive your insolent people.

© 2011 by Dennis Dale Kemper

BREAK THOU THE BREAD OF LIFE – II

 
Built of wood: the dark-stained
Rack of torture. Defiled hands of
Earth, wielding iron tools
Arranged the brutal beams to
Kill, humiliate, silence the
Teacher of righteousness:
Heaven’s bestowed bread they
Offered for blood sacrifice,
Unknowingly upon the altar of
Timbers. Thought merely
Homicide, a solution to an
Embarrassing situation, the
Broken bread was the inception:
Redemption, Resurrection,
Everlasting life, eternal joy
Accomplished. Sons and
Daughters of New Earth,
Offered the Bread of Life:
Food that satisfies forever
Leaving no lingering hunger
Inasmuch as he was broken
For us. Take the Bread.
Eat. Do this with thanksgiving.

 
© 2011 by Dennis Dale Kemper

BREAK THOU THE BREAD OF LIFE  I

Confession of Simon Peter as recorded in the final chapter of the gospel of John

Built on the seashore, a charcoal fire
Roasts a few fish and warms some bread.
Eagerly, hungrily I swim ashore. Yes, I
Accept your invitation to eat with you. I
Knew it was you, Lord! Especially after we
Threw the nets back into the sea.
How many fish did we haul in?
One hundred fifty-three!
Unheard of!
Lord, the way you
Take the bread in your hands, just now,
Holding it up to heaven…‘as often as you
Eat this bread’…yes, I remember.
I…I remember that I
Betrayed you! Three times I lied
Rather than admit I even knew you!
 
Enough! Enough of my pretensions. No longer so
Arrogantly will I blithely boast, “I will
Die for you, though all others desert you!”*
Oh, Lord where else can I go?
Other than you, who else can I
Follow? It is you who have the Words of
Life!** Yes, Lord. You know that
I love you; I will tend to your lambs. I will
Feed your sheep with the Words of
Eternal life—Living Bread that satisfies forever.
 
_______
* Matthew 26:35

** John 6:68

© 2011 by Dennis Dale Kemper

NEAR TO THE HEART OF GOD  The parable of the King’s garden

No one was to
Enter the garden sanctuary, save the king and his attendants.
The front gate was secured, and an
Ancient stone wall surrounded the
Royal grounds. One other person,
the garden keeper, had access to the peaceful enclosure.
 
There is a place…

It was in that place that new seedlings of
a delicate flowering plant were carefully
Tended. It required all of the gardener’s patience and skill to
ensure that the young plants would come to maturity at the
proper time and would not fail to
Open graceful petals to the first rays of the early summer sun.
 
***********
 
All was well, and the plants were thriving, when,
one moonless night, a monstrous
Terrible and cowardly act brought grievous injury and profound suffering
to the sleeping garden. An intruder, the hireling of
a corrupt and envious baron whose lands lay nearby,
climbed unseen over the old stone wall and dropped
Heavily onto the vulnerable flower beds below.
The ignoble trespasser maliciously crushed newly
Emerging shoots and frail yellow tendrils into the damp earth
under his grimy boots.
The noise alerted the King’s guards,
and soon the miscreant was seized and imprisoned.
But the awful damage had been done.
 
When the slanting rays of morning light revealed
the terrible devastation: The undoing of months of his careful labor,
the gardener’s eyes were filled with grief and unfathomable pain;
but, sadly, not with disbelief. Such destruction had
Happened before…too many times before.
 
***********
 
Now, see the gardener again at work.
Each day he bends low to the earth, and
Anoints the broken flowers—the
Rare, priceless, broken flowers—with a
Tincture of a miraculous healing
Oil. Each day he draws from his cloak a small, clay vessel
containing the mingled
Fragrances and resplendent Light of another
Garden—
 
of quiet rest…

a garden in the Gardener’s
Own country—and places a drop of the precious elixir onto
the new leaves of the recovering plants.
 
a place where sin cannot molest…
 
The faithful Keeper of the King’s gardens knows
the restorative balm is potent, and that one
Day his labors will be rewarded.
One day, the fair blossoms will at last appear,
luminous with the soft glow of a faraway dawn.
 
near to the heart of God.
 
 
© 2011 by Dennis Dale Kemper

 
Heaven’s  deepest  shadows, if shadows there be, still
Overwhelm the combined candlepower of the
World’s brightest beacons, as cataclysmic, nuclear
Fusion, igniting infant stars, swallows into
Insignificance a swirl of sparks
Rising swiftly into the night, glittering but for a
Moment. Heaven’s Light—an
All-pervading, all-purifying celestial
Fire, leaping across boundaries
Of convoluted time and
Unimagined constructs of space—blazes forth from
No other source than the throne of the Father of Lights.
_______His bright glory is the crystalline bedrock,
Declared before aeons began, to be the building site of
A New Earth, upon which a magnificent city would arise,
Towering gracefully into a luminous sky where night will never fall.
Incorruptible are the living stones carefully and skillfully placed
On this changeless and immovable foundation. Never will this city be besieged.
Never will this city fall.
 

© 2011 by Dennis Dale Kemper