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I have been meaning to set up a blog in order to put some of my poems on the web, as some have commented that they are worth sharing...so here is a test attempt, with one of my most recent offerings!

Enjoy!

First Easter

Weeping, betrayal, denial;
A culmination, an end –
Not the one envisaged through all the talk of saving, reigning, rescuing.
Not this.
Frail and fragile, agonising weakness.
Searing pain from brutal nails.
“It is finished,” let out in a gasping cry.
Confusion, futility, hopes dashed,
Hiding and huddled, not daring to face the dawn,
The laughter, the jeers, the “I told you so’s.”
Where is your saviour now?
Descending dejectedly into the darkest of nights,
Clouds obscuring the vision.
The hope, previously stirring in hearts who had believed, halted.
What of that hope? What of his promises?
Of freedom? Deliverance? A coming kingdom?
Dejected, demoralised, a dark wall of defeat,
Hopelessness takes hold.
The curtain of the temple, tearing,
Raising questions, sparking brief hope,
Quickly quenched as hours pass
And all is still – irredeemable, irreversible.
A night, a day, another night.
Could anyone have truly clung to hope
Through such cloying darkness?
Then, morning. A tomb. A woman
Daring to squint through reddened eyes –
A boulder rolled away,
An angelic announcement,
A dawning realisation.
As a flicker of possibility, a glimmer of hope
Rose up in one woman, one Sunday –
As she ran to tell the others –
Could she have had any inkling of
The boundless, the infinite, the far-flung consequences
Of that morning, those words, that outcome,
Tentatively hoped for and suddenly here?
Could her spirit, staring into the eyes of her risen Lord,
have understood, just for a moment,
How defeat had turned to victory,
Hopelessness to hope,
Death and separation from God,
To a beautiful, forgiven, hope-filled future,
Not just for her,
But for all who dare to squint,
Through reddened eyes,
Into the face of the One
Who can turn our mourning into dancing,
Our pain to healing,
Our greatest defeats to our most resplendent victories
And our sentence of eternal darkness
To the astonishing promise of everlasting life.

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