Posted 486 days ago

I am a Wasteland

A Lenten Reflection by Lindsay Lackey

I am a wasteland, desolate desert of rock and bramble. My stones do not nourish; my trees offer no relief from the burning sun. Sorrow swells my dusty banks; my famished soil feasts on corpses of golden calves.

Sojourners lose their strength and turn instead to the everlasting pillar of cloud and flame. My dust baptizes the suffering, completing the river’s washing. I house the abandoned, the broken, the forbidden, the faithful. My arms held the mother and child who did not fulfill a promise, the prophet who enraged a queen, the generation enslaved by fear.

Today the carpenter, my creator, enters my barrenness to be forged in my fire. Sandaled feet now walk my hillsides; tomorrow they will walk on water. Soles now cradled in gray dust will be wiped clean by a prostitute’s tears. His feet tread this valley of temptation that they may be pierced in payment for all who stumble. I offer him only what I have: my silence, so he may hear; an unbroken midnight sky, so he may remember wholeness; deprivation, so he may be filled.

I am the bridge between slavery and promise, the desert of waiting, the wasteland of redemption.

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