Near Heaven's Shores
When the tide wraps us in icy covers and our body in shivers,
and the warmest fire gives wind chills,
we’ve come to know something of suffering,
and how her cuts ebb into us
and seems to take on
a new nature of unrelenting ocean.
We see how she does not seem to
carry vessels of rescue,
or the Savior inside Who can calm her,
as we wade a murky
swath of cold blue
land and awaiting rocks.
When pain doesn’t live on a
nerve ending, but rests
deep inside where aches still pulse,
no one knows our suffering.
No one has sat down, bench-side,
to look at those
agony-filled cups we call eyes, to watch them spill over and
acquaint with our suffering.
No one has journeyed beneath to
uncover a suffering
that is not one thing and is
yet one complex series of pain.
Perhaps none have seen that God is with His child,
understanding, loving, fashioning.
When that region of our body has in
it the troubling route of tenderness,
traveled by inflictor or disease,
tragedy and providence,
family or foe,
what we have come to know
may move into a different light.
And we may treasure that we have come to know Him Who suffered,
that He knows our pain,
and that the song of suffering will
drown near heaven’s shores.