"Sound of Light" by Nicora Gangi

"It is a great sadness when sufferers seek relief by sparing God his sovereignty over pain. The sadness is that this undercuts the very hope it aims to create…pain and loss are bitter providences. Who has lived long in this world of woe without weeping, sometimes until the head throbs and there are no more tears…? But oh the folly of trying to lighten the ship of suffering by throwing God’s governance overboard. The very thing the tilting ship needs in the storm is the ballast of God’s good sovereignty, not the unburdening of deep and precious truth. What makes the crush of calamity sufferable is not that God shares our shock, but that His bitter providences are laden with the bounty of love."
~ John Piper   (Click to visit his multi-resource website)


"I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us." - Romans 8:18 Holy Bible, NIV   

 (Visit Bible Gateway for full access to God's Word in multiple versions including audio)

Beyond the Curse 

So this was death. 
The end of music.

In the throat,
no fragrant throb
of breath or offering.

No limbs conducting
outreach toward
the hand of love.  

She’d lived with signs:
the wilted garden;
in the brow of Cain
an unrelenting furrow.

This.  A fall descending
to descendants
and the verdict dust.

How hard to eye the fruit
of her conviction: murder
her defiance had enabled…

Yet, two generations into
you will surely die,
God’s mark
of steadfast clemency.

Thus even Eve,
who mothered mortal life,
could taste in burial
the still-sweet yield
of undertaking.
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Redemption 

The angels offered mercy,
an escape for Lot’s entire household
counting almost-sons who having witnessed
a divine defense of honor
dared to scoff at certain doom.

Commanded to depart, Lot paused…
needed to be tugged away from the destructive
self caught up in doubts and compromise
the hand of grace dislodged for him; for us. 

What did Lot’s wife hope to see
when on that moving day her eyes slid back
to town, where she had raised a family,
exchanged the recipes of substitution? 

Perhaps she sought to douse with tears
the fire of a hearth where friendship dawdled
near the shame she’d entertained.

In her heart, still burning, embers
of a tolerance for sin we too have hosted;
in her final act, a turning hardened into destination.
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Practicing Forever

“One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice.
He threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him…”  ~ Luke 17:15-16    

Some lepers race away,
catch up to former life
with greater loss of sense.
Some dispute the source
of their reprieve. 
 
Still on record, one example
of the remnant who
in remedy perceived
relationship: the white-flag
standard of salvation.
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The Life of Lazarus  
                                                          
With illness and concern came mourners
to the grave of days and meals,
aromatic memory and prospect.
 
After four days in the house of tears
the man in deadbolt night awoke,
commanded to emerge
 
from irreversible decay reversed
to model how that Day will be
a coronation of the treasured dust.


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