Shedding Layers.

How many leaves do you unfold?
How many places will you walk to?
If you were blind what color would you dream in?
If you could not hear would music sound the same in your heart?

What to do when it is no longer a world you speak to and people who listen?
How do you unite in care when you walk different ways?

You wear the shoes that seat the same sores.
You root the foot of one next to you.
Another day, another one to one another.

Lighter feathers in my jacket pocket.
Sun shines on the faces lifted up and on the hair of those slanted down.
Smiles return. Arm and arm couples.
The smell of pungent wind from god knows where?
Broken windows
Broken hearts
Pain like the shedding river overflows its banks.
Water rises
Eyes hold back
Reflected ripples
Standing tall and straight
Walking somewhere
To my broken bridge

Who will plant a tree?
Who will water the sun?

Where is the Majesty?

Soften hearts, like soften snow.
Hard hearts like melting rivers.
Each need not a thing
Like what the river wants to flow.
Snapshots of micro-second moments.

What do you hear? What do you see?

Rocks are crying out in isolation.
Words of God coming face to face.
Speak for the first time.
Breathe for the first time.
Enter into life for a new time.

Spires behold heaven like everyday concrete jungles.
Bricks built by hand and tested by time.
Adored by many eyes yet spurned by weather and wind.
Like frost on the trees leaves a biting cold.
Hearts heat the frost in search of footsteps to follow.
Behind, before on the way.

People see life in many different ways. It’s like looking into a kaleidoscope to view splintered glass and each piece represents the rainbow of descriptions of the world. As I have thought about our ministry, team, and how God is working here in Kaunas I wrote this poem. I know for many of you it seems vague and hard to understand instead of telling you a story about life this week, but I will trust that if you will desire to see deeper you will ponder this picture. I have spent some time recently reading a book by Henri Nouwen called In the Name of Jesus and highly recommend it. One of the things that has become increasingly clear to me is the need to share in life the layers of my own life. May you know that God is working through our team as we shed our own layers of our heart to each other and to those in need of a warm coat.