Matthew 14:22-33
an original poem.
As You walked on the sea, rolling ankle & knee to balance on blueness below, did You look down— down, like Peter Christ-bound, and is it the God or the man who knows every loose lapsing drop of lapis lazuli and the unsuspected creatures of the sea? As you walked, did You think? Should You let Yourself sink in a death secret and divine? Did it tempt You, when foreknew the rough wood and hot sun You would bear: that You walked on, what sign! and left every loose lapsing drop of lapis lazuli and the unsuspected creatures of the sea for men who’d sooner slay You than see You.
Last year, I spent a few long hours pondering this question: why was it that Christ’s death had to be so horrific? Why couldn’t He have spared Himself such torture and passed quietly, peacefully, still paying the death-debt on our behalf and yet without such suffering?
It seems that a God Who desires our participation also sought to be more closely unified to us through His participation. God, now, has truly suffered, in a way understandable to His mortal creatures and yet also beyond our imagining in severity. We can relate to Him because He first related to us. The mercy which He could have extended to Himself, in perhaps an easier death like I imagine here, He instead traded for the mercy of allowing us a Savior Who has walked the road to Cavalry and so can walk any road allotted for those who follow Him.
I am in no way a theological authority. This is just my own personal devotion, expressed through poetry— Jesus, Who condescended to save us through His sacrifice, condescended further to suffer alongside us in every respect possible. All that, for men who’d sooner slay Him than see Him!
