Comfort, comfort o my people
Cry out for their sake
Do not offer a hug, a prayer,
even a sentiment of justice, but offer
your voice of grief and protest
to bring comfort in the face
of mountains of violence
and stony paths of
barricades
and mazes of
stumbling blocks
erected because it was
decided in what we believed
of God once upon a time — and
not so very long ago, in fact today —
that all matters of faith should be
arranged so that a few
might have that
precious
elusive sense
of heavenly guarantee
(all others meant to pave
the golden streets with ‘other’ flesh
to save the few from their grievous sins)
and “comfort” was always intended
to be for us, by virtue of faith,
the quantity being
limited
so don’t take
my comfort from me
“Comfort my people” and we think
“That’s me! Let God comfort my life!”
but perhaps not so much…
and if (quite likely)
God comforts
the very persons whose
discomfort sustains our comfort
then what can we believe?
Perhaps, in the words
of the prophet,
(sort of)
it is time to confess
to one another: “You have suffered
enough. We indebted you to our salvation
but we are in your debt until
these mountains
have been made low
and the stony paths smooth.”
Comfort my people,
says the LORD,
with your confession
and your crying out and
your tenderness to one another.