The God of New

“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” –Isaiah 43:18-19

The Earth’s Baptism

That morning the rain started lightly,

coalescing in the pre-dawn, murmuring

where wind once adorned air;

slowly it coiled like a river snake,

soft and intangible.

The rain gathered itself among crackling reeds,

bent low to smell, to taste unseasoned earth

that would become the tomb of a beloved child.

The rain wrapped around and around,

a tear-woven shroud,

tenderly, to conceal what had already died

and begun to decay in the still darkness.

Unraveling in grief,

it wept for its now-muffled loss,

and did not breathe for forty days

until at last the rain gasped,

surprised by light that reached inside the tomb

and showed walls untouched by sorrow.

Hope tempered despair

and the rain changed then,

never again to consume all.