Cold Was the Tomb

2009

Cold was the tomb where my dead heart lay
Void of life and steeped in shame
Empty of joy and life and day
Filled with guilt and hate and blame

Long was the silence of a heart turned cold
Warped till it couldn’t recognize truth
16 years and a mind that is old
Purity and innocence both murdered in youth

Burning was the hate of an empty heart
Choking and grabbing and draining away
I and my God were ever apart
My mind was convinced there was never a way

To die to death
To live to life
To trade all my emptiness, pain, and puke
To open my eyes
To be born again
To a life that is living, fulfilling, and new

Great was the chasm me dear Lord crossed
Down to my world of self-centered drive
Love pushed Him to rescue what was lost
To take what was dead, and make it alive

He stooped down and spit in the dust to form clay
He opened my eyes and made me see day

How great was the cost that brought life to my steps
The jeering, the tearing, the shortness of breath
When God came in flesh to stand in my place
I bruised Him and mocked Him and spit in His face

Proud was the heart that was condemned to die
It did not recognize it had been set free
When holy fire fell from the sky
And burned up the sacrifice instead of me
God, fully human, nailed to a tree

As Isaac's own death was replaced with a ram
I have been saved by a crucified lamb

Loud was the all wondrous all healing grace
That wakened a mind from guilt and sin
When by His mercy He lifted my face
“Be opened” my eyes and my heart let Him in

'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear
That awesome debt I could not pay
And grace made all fear disappear
In three dark hours one yesterday

Now the cold has birthed a light
By His work my heart will grow
Out of filth to what is right
My soul knows heaven from below

Jesus, Jesus, how I love Him
Eat His body, drink His blood
Living water, ever flowing
He has plunged me in the flood
of healing waters from His throne
I’ve been called to enter in
To His temple as His own
By His suffering, cleansed from sin

How can I worry of life’s passing doubts
I have a promise that won’t pass away
Jesus has called at my grave “come out”
And He’ll keep calling till earth’s final day

When I look in His face and feel His hands
“My Lord and my God” You’ve saved me from night
I’ll ever sing glory to God become man
When God given faith becomes rapturous sight

Tu Ne Quaesieris

For all the lore of Lodge and Myers
I cannot heal my torn desires,
Nor hope for all that man can speer
To make the riddling earth grow clear.
Though it were sure and proven well
That I shall prosper, as they tell,
In fields beneath a different sun
By shores where other oceans run,
When this live body that was I
Lies hidden from the cheerful sky,
Yet what were endless lives to me
If still my narrow self I be
And hope and fail and struggle still,
And break my will against God’s will,
To play for stakes of pleasure and pain
And hope and fail and hope again,
Deluded, thwarted, striving elf
That through the window of my self
As through a dark glass scarce can see
A warped and masked reality?
But when this searching thought of mine
Is mingled in the large Divine,
And laughter that was in my mouth
Runs through the breezes of the South,
When glory I have built in dreams
Along some fiery sunset gleams,
And my dead sin and foolishness
Grow one with Nature’s whole distress,
To perfect being I shall win,
And where I end will Life begin.

-C. S. Lewis from his first published work, Spirits in Bondage