Shunned At A Funeral — The Little Girl S God

The sun was low on the frontier line
Gold on the dust, blood red on the pine
My canteen dry, my shadow
Thin, and the ache of the road
Wore deep in my skin.
I sat by a fence
Where the wild grass leaned halfway
Tired and half unseen.
When a
Small voice came from the cottonwood
Shade, sweet as rain on a grave newly made.
A little girl stood with her hands
Folded there with the sunset
Caught in her tangled hair.
She said
"Ma'am, if the trail
Has been hard, could
I tell you a little
About my god?"
I said, "Child, I suppose that
You may." And she smiled like dawn
Breaking over clay.
She kicked at the dust with a little brown shoe.
Then her
Eyes lifted up like the sky
Broke through.
She said, "My
God counts
Barrels and numbers the stars he bottles
The tears from our hidden scars
He rides on the thunder yet bends to the small.
He's king over kingdoms
And father of all.
He carves every
Canyon and carries each lamb.
He wrote
Every river in the lines of his hand.
He
Whispers through wheat fields
And roars through the sea.
And still
He has time for a child like me"
She said, "He is holy
But mercy runs deep.
He watches the vow
Where lost people reap.
He is
Fire to the proud.
He is bread to the poor.
He is wrath at the gate and grace
At the door.
He humbles the mighty and holds up the weak.
He hears what
The broken are too tired to speak.
He
Thunders injustice but kneels
Down in love.
He governs the dust in the galaxies above"
Then she said he came down
Where the low people live not to take
From the empty but freely to give.
He
Was wrapped like a baby in
Bethlehem straw.
Yet angels looked on him with trembling.
All he walked with the beggars.
He touched the unclean.
He made blind eyes open and washed sinners clean.
And he
Spoke to the storm till the sea bowed
Low and called dead men out from the dark below.
He blessed the little children.
He welcomed the lame
He ate with the guilty and bore all
Their shame.
He was gentle as
Lambful and stronger than flamefully
Godfully man in
Jesus his name
By now
I was leaning like grass
In the rain as the girl kept speaking of glory and pain.
And singing] Her
Voice was so small but it filled up the plane like heaven had opened a door in and singing] my name.
She said he
Was hated by men.
He had maybe was
Kissed by betrayal and falsely arraigned.
He was mocked by the mouths he had given their breath.
Then
He carried his cross to the mountain
Of death.
The nails did not hold
Him as much as his grace for love set
His shoulders and steady his face.
He drank down the wrath that his
People had earned till justice was
Answered and mercy returned
She said the grave could not
Keep and the stone could
NOT STAY.
DEATH
LOST ITS TEETH AT THE BREAKING of day
The dawn found the soldiers with fear in their eyes and the king of forever walked out alive.
He
Rains over harvest over speed and hail
Over ships only ghost on the trail.
He rains over fever bound in his sword.
Over every long door and every false lord he reigns.
When we
Tremble he reigns.
When we fall gathers
His children through mercy's call
She said he is patient for the grass come so it is faithful when furn
Is near and the light below
Let us green he is truth from the world
Feels thin as a dream he is
Shepherd and savior the door and the vine rude and the br the bread and the wine he is lion of
Judah the lamb who was slain the first and the last who is coming again he is alpha
Omega the ancient of days.
Yet
He hears little children
Who whisper
His praise
I felt my heart break like a dry
River bed where the rain of her words
Began rising instead.
I had walked like
A widow beneath my own name with pockets
Full of ashes and lips full of blame.
She said, "If you are weary, he
Knows how far.
If you are
Wounded, he names every scar.
If you are
Lost, he has numbered the road.
If
You are broken
He carries the load"
Then the fiddle cried out and the banjo rang clear and the wind
Through the grass into the gene near.
The sky turned purple.
The first
Stars burn, then something
Inside me heat.
Heat