Echoes of a Trusted Psalm

    Here is a trusted psalm, held up to the light of bare bulbs hanging from the untiled ceiling. The words of the song echo from the cold, rough stones of the room.

    Do not love the world.
    Or what is in the world – cursed confusion, secret fraud and corruption in every generation. Car accidents and other roadblocks. Angled and wrong.

    If anyone loves the world – the familiar noise of a shattering empire under one imperial flag -
    the love of the Father finds no home there.

    Because what there is in the world – lying, stealing, cheating, mistreatment of others, murder, dismembered bodily desire, the lust of disordered eyes, and the pride of parties in possession
    is not from the Father.

    The bottles on the wall rattle. Electricity hums and the lights flicker.

    It is the world
    and the world of disordered desires, accumulative abominations, acquisitions again and again
    is passing away in a burst of fire.

    But the echoes of the psalm ring forever and ever.

1 John 2:15-17

For the Liturgy

    For the liturgy, King David and his religious officials and worship leaders established a school of prophets trained in the songs of the Lord played upon the harps, lyres, and cymbals. These are their names and divisions:

    Asaph, singer and songwriter, and his sons:
    Zaccur – who sang of love’s open door.
    Joseph – cleaning up the air, making it easier to breathe.
    Nethaniah – who thought it better to dwell alone in the wilderness, but moved to Jerusalem nevertheless.
    Asharelah – who had a rottenness in his bones, a cancer, but sang ever and on.
    They all prophesied under the king’s direction.

    Jeduthun, spokesman for unguarded truth and his sons:
    Gedaliah – dripping, dripping on a rainy day.
    Zeri – who kept his eye on the ball.
    Jeshaiah – was a welcome distraction from one little mistake.
    Hashabiah – took a turn for the worse.
    Matthithiah – who was honest about a deep hurt in his heart.
    Under their father, who played upon the harp, they prophesied to all who would sing along.

    Heman held up a hand with his family:
    Bukkiah – an angry storm over the lake.
    Matthiniah – blamed himself for things that were never his fault.
    Uzziel – lived in cynical times of terminal irony.
    Shebuel – loosed the bands and unbound heavy burdens to let the oppressed go free.
    Jerimoth – stood in the corner, listening.
    Hananiah – a safe haven for freedom.
    Hanani – always asked for the truth.
    Eliathath – with a tenuous relationship with sleep.
    Giddalti – like lazy clouds and loose dying leaves.
    Romamti-Ezar – a wildfire in the dark.
    Joshbekashah – waited and waited and waited and waited.
    Mallothi – knew the end of the thing from the beginning.
    Hothir – a devoted friend, dependable in the varying seasons of life.
    Mazioth – was left holding the bag when the lights went out.
    All these - and there were a great many of them, weren’t there - were the sons of Heman, the king’s seer, and they, along with three unnamed sisters who sang like the breaking dawn and dying day, played the trumpet and the trombone and sang to the accompaniment of cymbals, lyres, and harps for the liturgy of the house of God.

    Asaph, Jeduthun, and Heman trained in the songs of Yahweh, with their brothers and sons, all two hundred and eighty-eight of them, junior and senior, masters and students alike. I remember their voices. I am still singing their songs.

1 Chronicles 25:1-9

How Small Your Strength

    Samira, now living underground in sunless, soulless caves, unable to anticipate the changing of the seasons, and helpless to the elements, with burnt patches and skin lesions. Now suffering beneath the Babylonian spirit industry and hypocrites with cultured countenances. Spiritual influencers without scripture.

    Ignored disjunctive accents. Paused without proceeding. Will goodness itself be raised from the dead? Be not faithless but believing, right? Please. Please.

    House to house, imprisoned by militant Tribulationist agents of the government. Years and years given to cruel blackmailers. Soft vexations behind the stone. Scrubbed of profanity, but the vulgarity remains. A modern murdered disciple.

    “I’m tired of being…” Samira began but could not complete the thought. “Tired of being afraid? Alone? Exhausted? Maybe I’m just tired of being.”

    Heaven for height and unsearchable earth for depth. Climb into heaven and dig into hell.

    “My body. My hunger.” A human desperation out of her hell. A freedom of confusion. “I’ve stumbled my soul.”

    She examined her wounds. Daily injuries and strong stabbings.

    “What do you do when the world spins further into chaos? Overwhelmed by a near constant report of collapse. The housefire spreads and our children are electrocuted at school. What do you do when your heart fails, when you faint in days of adversity?”

    She sobbed. “My strength is not worth much.”

Proverbs 24:10

The Visions of Iddo the Seer

    These are the visions of Iddo the Seer in the first year of King Jeroboam, son of Nebat.¹

    When the sound of the fire died down and the desert wind, full of grit, laid low, I was found naked, more than naked, outside the walls of the city. I climbed the foundation of the walls and looked about the city. I saw the house reduced to scattered stones.

    I was assaulted by terror and unable to stand. I climbed out the window and stood on the sand.

    I saw stones stripped and laid bare in blind circles. It was the house of the dead, flying the banners of corpses.

    Men cowered behind the wall. Forced through barricades into darkened corners. The city was a great inhabitation of despair. And I was afraid to scream.

    Strange visions in my head during the night. Visions and a voice that said, “You must not speak of yesterday.”

    I saw beasts and stars and horns and slaughtered children in the rubbled remains of an open air prison. A shadow army. A whisper militia now screaming for the whole world to hear.

    I saw lightning and all the shekinah glory legends, all eyes and fire in the storm hovering over my bed. I saw burning olive trees beyond the walls and checkpoints. I dreamt of burning human bones ritually defiling the land. I dreamt of fish and cucumbers, leeks, onion, garlic, and watermelons rotting.

    The voice said again, “You must not speak of yesterday.” I sat long in silence listening. Waiting for another word.

    I saw hellfire fall from the sky to burn families fleeing in the dark. I saw the earth crack open to devour and drag them down. And the voice said again, “You must not speak of yesterday.”

And I knew it was not the voice of HaShem. And all I could do was scream into the sound of the fire.

2 Chronicles 9:29

1 922 BCE approximately. Scholars continue to debate.

Disappointed with His Face

    Nadim looked in the mirror and sighed. It was his face. It was his face and he was tired of it. Somewhere in the years he’d grown disappointed with his face.

    He’d never thought of himself as ugly. But neither had he considered himself handsome. His wife, Amina, disagreed with him, but he knew she was biased. He loved her, and appreciated her. But he knew she was wrong.

    His face was… too familiar. Was that it? Too familiar? It looked so much like his father’s face. Not that his father was ugly. And people had told him often over the years that he was the spitting image of his father. It wasn’t resentment; it was inheritance. His father was a good man and Nadim loved him.

    And his face was … too changed. Was that it? When he looked at himself in the mirror he saw both his face as it was now and as it was when he was thirty years younger. He saw the lines and scars and the weathering effects of the sun.

    ‘Maybe I could shave,’ he thought. ‘Or change my hair?’ He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘If I can’t be perfect, could I, at least, be devoted?’ he asked himself. And he wondered what that meant.

    Every difficult moral decision was there, reflected in the lines at the corners of his eyes, the crevice below his lower lip, the scar that jutted across his left cheek. Every long day at work. Every mortgage payment. Every parent teacher conference. He wiped the condensation from the glass and the tears from his eyes.

    He could hear Amina calling him to breakfast. He could smell the coffee.