The Face of Anguish

A response to the earthquake in Haiti - pray for the people!

The Face of Anguish

By Steve Loggins

1/21/10

Unexpected pain fills the heart of the young,

Fear of the future is not on her mind yet.

Only a longing, unsatisfied, and strong,

And a sense of loss and a looming threat.

A heart pierced through with urgent anguish,

Her family’s gone, her home, her love

No hope is left, her sorrows languish

like waves on a beach with moonlight above.

The shaking earth has killed her world,

Strangers invade to offer relief

to hurts unimaginable, emotions unfurled

like a flag in the wind, depicting her grief.

A scream of despair with tears of wailing,

No comfort can come to a damaged soul.

There is only the pain, there is only the tearing

of a heart ripped in two that none can console.

“Time heals all wounds”, so the saying goes

but this means nothing to her today,

and in truth, it’s not right for everyone knows

that scars from our wounds will stay.

“Does God hate me? Why did this happen?”

These questions linger, the millions ponder

The disaster struck, the suffering so sudden,

In a place where pain was prone to wander.

No answers, just questions, fill the air of despair

There is no easy solution,

But a hand offered in love can answer a prayer,

And ease pain into resolution.

God loves the Haitian people,

just as He loves the Jew,

He sent His son for their consolation

For sin, which He hates, His world, He renews.

Adrift

Adrift

by Steve Loggins

1/12/10

Stranded in an endless sea of doubt

No sign of safety or rescue

No hope

The waters stretch to claim me

for their own

drowning

I make my struggle against

the overwhelming

flood

Without any aid of flotsam

To hold me up

despair

Alone I tread, adrift in woe

The sound of water

engulfing

No ship in sight, no rescuers

No birds so far from

land

The easy thing will be to die

To stop the struggle

sink

Beneath the waves, silence comes

The peace of death’s

embrace

Say “no!” to coward’s easy way,

swim on ‘til something

changes

There is always hope

Faith and

Love

To sustain us, though we perish

A far white shore rimmed in

gold

Turning of the Year

Turning of the year

by Steve Loggins

1/3/10

The countdown to the moment goes and then the clock strikes twelve,

The world erupts in jubilant cheer as another year is put on the shelf.

A blank slate is now before us, the grounds for our expectant joys,

We hope for the best, we wish for a change, the change that time deploys.

But what is time? a ticking clock will demonstrate its passing,

A linear count of finite beats, that culminates with none amassing.

An hourglass may run the time through a bottleneck to show,

That sand has passed from bulb to bulb, from moving high to low.

But is this time? Or just a trick to show us what we want to know,

That we have the time to live and breathe, time to learn and grow.

The turning of a year for us marks many things we want to see,

We count ourselves by the years we live, and hope this one turns out to be

Better than the previous one, and all those gone before,

With furtive optimism we meet the year as a new thing to explore.

Some hopes are dashed immediately, as death and suffering come

For Chronos knows no changing days, time keeps plodding on and on.

Atropos cuts the spinning thread that Lachesis measures out,

For each man, woman, child of us, the Fates make us cry or shout.

It is a lie. There are no Fates or Norns to decide our days,

There is only God, the master of time, to Him we owe our praise.

He gave us life, He gives us time, to live, to love, to die.

And then His promise made to us is that time will say “goodbye”

No turning of the year, no sorrow comes to life,

Eternity will end our fears, heaven ends all strife.

The Master stands beyond our days, and from eternal past

Outside the years we measure out, only His people last.

So count the passing of your time, number your days and die

But understand that there is more – trust God and don’t deny.