Mystery

How mysterious I find You--
waking from a pale sleep in which,
nameless and privately ashamed
among a roaring audience, I watched
a haughty man lightly achieve
my own secret dreams, yearnings
denied my own fierce efforts--only
in grief to find Your glory
a mysterious comfort to my dishonor.

Before a perfect God, all my victories
and defeats, I suppose, are
cheap trophies & shallow scars
of a misunderstood time:
a Hegelian atheist may accuse me of
the slave's fallacy; cheapening today's defeat
with the promise of tomorrow's victory;
perhaps. But--that isn't this.

Heaven, a glory known in hints and parts,
and much imagination, but expected
in the heart of every Man since birth--
gift of a Creator God, perfect in joy and
mysterious in kindness--
comforts by consuming
all my misplaced desires,
supplanting all my secret dreams.




May 2017