A word picture of Jesus
JESUS
A light,
Illuminating light,
Not divided by darkness.
The lineaments of his face,
Eyes searching, sorrowing;
Eyes sowing seeds of love
In lowly fields of pain and care.
Eyebrows like eaves overshadowing
The bare walls of clay and stone.
A strong jaw grasping the frame
Of features bold and brown;
A nose long and lesser in power
Than the lips speaking or the eyes
Looking,
But like One guarding the chamber
Of thought.
His body wrapped in a cloak of
Pure wool, uncut and whole,
Upright and strong;
Hands lined with creased skin,
Roughened with a carpenters work;
Arms muscular, browned with sunlight;
Legs and feet firm, sandals strapped
With leather.
Who was he who left his carpenter’s
Bench,
To wander over fields, hills and meadows
Looking for souls?
What turned his thoughts away from
Comforts?
Culinary arts, sweet repose after work
done and rest between sheets and a
pillows repose?
What is the madness that broods over
Sorrows and censors life?
A man of sorrows acquainted with grief,
And we hid our faces from him because
We loved life.
How loving is life!?
How enchanted and jealous we were to
Save life, even a thimble full to sip
and taste.
But he had no love for life.
He did not love the world.
He had a life we could not see.
That is why we would not receive him
Or listen to his words.
We lived on the outside,
He on the inside where
He spoke to his Father in heaven.
Not a world he did not know but
One he had always known.
For in his Father’s house there
Are many mansions,
If it were not so he would not have
Spoken of them.
Mary. His mother, kept all these
Things in her heart and pondered
Them.
She had the charge to raise the Son
Of God to be king of a kingdom
That would never end.
She knew too that a sword would
Pierce her own heart.
How she must have feared that sword.
Begotten of his Father,
He was his Father’s offspring in Paradise.
He was there when the earthly world
Was created. When his Father said,
Let there be light and when he let it
Be.
Were you there when a child
Was born, were you not eager to see
Its face, its form, its cry for life?
Were you not saddened and distressed
When the child died?
The eyes of the holy Jesus saw the
World made and he saw it die in sin.
He knew the past from the present
And the future path he had to tread
To save the sinner, to call the sinner
Away from sin to salvation.
A light,
Illuminating light,
Not divided by darkness.
The lineaments of his face,
Eyes searching, sorrowing;
Eyes sowing seeds of love
In lowly fields of pain and care.
Eyebrows like eaves overshadowing
The bare walls of clay and stone.
A strong jaw grasping the frame
Of features bold and brown;
A nose long and lesser in power
Than the lips speaking or the eyes
Looking,
But like One guarding the chamber
Of thought.
His body wrapped in a cloak of
Pure wool, uncut and whole,
Upright and strong;
Hands lined with creased skin,
Roughened with a carpenters work;
Arms muscular, browned with sunlight;
Legs and feet firm, sandals strapped
With leather.
Who was he who left his carpenter’s
Bench,
To wander over fields, hills and meadows
Looking for souls?
What turned his thoughts away from
Comforts?
Culinary arts, sweet repose after work
done and rest between sheets and a
pillows repose?
What is the madness that broods over
Sorrows and censors life?
A man of sorrows acquainted with grief,
And we hid our faces from him because
We loved life.
How loving is life!?
How enchanted and jealous we were to
Save life, even a thimble full to sip
and taste.
But he had no love for life.
He did not love the world.
He had a life we could not see.
That is why we would not receive him
Or listen to his words.
We lived on the outside,
He on the inside where
He spoke to his Father in heaven.
Not a world he did not know but
One he had always known.
For in his Father’s house there
Are many mansions,
If it were not so he would not have
Spoken of them.
Mary. His mother, kept all these
Things in her heart and pondered
Them.
She had the charge to raise the Son
Of God to be king of a kingdom
That would never end.
She knew too that a sword would
Pierce her own heart.
How she must have feared that sword.
Begotten of his Father,
He was his Father’s offspring in Paradise.
He was there when the earthly world
Was created. When his Father said,
Let there be light and when he let it
Be.
Were you there when a child
Was born, were you not eager to see
Its face, its form, its cry for life?
Were you not saddened and distressed
When the child died?
The eyes of the holy Jesus saw the
World made and he saw it die in sin.
He knew the past from the present
And the future path he had to tread
To save the sinner, to call the sinner
Away from sin to salvation.