When all else fails

when the engine light is on

when it putters, spews, coughs a death rattled breath

then lets go…I will begin to comprehend my worth.

When the paint, pealed and cracking on the barn

crumbling and falling down

speaks of yesterdays who are now 

older than Moses and all of the 

Red seas’ partings, 

the falling loaves from heaven

and the sinning ways of the blind

when the earth gives ways to swallow 

me whole…then I will find my way again.

When does when come again? 

What is there in a terminal world

to cling to like a single hand grip 

from plunging cliff? 

What foothold do I have left within 

all of my resources? 

I am nothing.

I am but a wisp of vapor

trailing on a breeze…defenseless 

and like Isaiah, when confronted with perfection

I am a broken man with muck and filth to my name.

When…maybe before the ‘when’…

as it turns a shade of gray in between 

the ‘Now’, I will clasp onto YOU.

Dear God, who never lets a foot slip.

Jehovah who comes and claims His own.

The solitary stable Rock in a mudslidden world…

Never in my ‘Whens’ but may it be in my ‘Nows’

that I run to you…and embrace all there is 

and grasp all there is 

so that Holiness replaces brokenness

whole restores the shattered…

And I am in You.