The little pile of fallen stones-
Broken altar to my pride
And all I had built on the
Foundations You had laid,
Lies there, desolate, fallen,
Frozen in time like a ruin
Of a place utterly brought low.
How ignorant I was to the
Diligent, persistent work
Secretly going on in my soul,
As it grabbed what was freely given
And repurposed it into an
Image of me, subtly mirroring
The work of the Master, but
Remaining a cheap counterfeit-
Standing proud like an
Emperor with no clothes.
I didn’t consciously set out
To build my own monument,
But in the deeper recesses
Of my unconscious desire
The plans were drawn up
And the work commenced
At a continuous rate, as instinctive
As the muscles which control
The heart and lungs, twitching
Without thought or choice.
What grew up there rapidly
Was the fulfilment of desires
Indulged in the absence
Of true grace and humility,
Driven on by a mistaken belief
That I knew grace and
Understood humility.
Only now, when what was built up
Has been unceremonially
Dismantled – shaken apart by
The earthquake of the revelation
Of truth of who I am,
Can I see that I am impoverished
In my knowledge and understanding
Of grace and humility, and as I look
At the ruins of my ruin all I really know
Of these two pillars of virtue
Is that I know that I don’t know
What I need to know –
That which can only come as a gift
From the One who IS grace,
And who models humility
As a natural expression of
His divine identity and image.
It is He who has gone into
The place of my spirit ahead of me.
It is He who has looked at
The conscious desire of my heart
And seen that what was
Under construction was different –
The wrong shape, and was building
Up as a heavy weight which would
Be chained to me as I became
More enslaved to my pride,
And a building too lofty to be safe
From the risk of falling in ruin.
It is He who spoke into my spirit
And caused an earthquake –
Breaking my spirit and shattering
All that is shakeable so that
Only what is true and pure
Might remain for my edification.
He broke me, not to punish me
Or to humiliate me with the
Shameful truth that I had
Built my own idol.
No – He broke me so
He can rebuild me in His image
To reflect His nature.
He broke me to rebuild me in
The shape of true grace.