#wordsofpraise

The iPhone Alarm reads 6:40

I hate facing reality

I grudgingly crawl out of the black hole that is my bed, the source of my malady called procrastination

The gravity of last night’s unfinished force times distance weighing me down.

Half asleep, half awake

I face a new day

Hey Siri, What is the meaning of life?

42

 “The time is now 7:57,

All students please report to Homeroom”

The smell of stress and worries, this rotting stench

Permeates the flesh

Decomposes our bodies,

The walking dead marched through the hallways

Half awake, half asleep

 I asked a classmate, what is the meaning of life?

Success, money, girls…

Sunday morning, rain is falling, praise team singing

I walk into the sanctuary

The smell of cologne and deodorant perfumes the atmosphere

But the stench of rotting flesh still persists through the air

This routine of churchgoing has become nothing more than a brief pit stop in our busy lives

“What is the meaning of life?”

“Jesus” shouted the kids in VBS

 Church, School, Home

Sprinkles of good times here and there

The sweetness of self-satisfaction, selfishness, satisfying the sweet tooth of my heart

My soul

What Am I doing?

I’m sleepwalking, lost in the very labyrinth that I built, the light of success and glory at the end of the tunnel nowhere to be found

I tell myself that I’m awake…

 What is the meaning of life?

I mean….I…I…

I know the right answer

The one that years of churchgoing and Sunday school has taught me “to Glorify God”

But what good is an empty heart that empties hollow praises crying “Hallow be thy name” to a Father that is so full-filling

His heart so Full of Love, our hearts so empty of Love, of faith.

What good is faith with so much doubt?

 “Jesus loves me yes I know, for the bible tells me so”

The Bible tells me that

Faith the size of a mustard seed can move mountains

But my Faith is seeded with doubt

 Seeds that sprout into trees and branch into sins, bearing rotten fruit:

Branches that are woven into a wooden coffin, encasing my heart. Fruits, poisoning my soul

In less than six seconds vines sprout from the ground, strangling my body

The thorns on the vines, pricks me

Sin, like a rose, pricks me, enchants me

But the prick, does not wake me

The rose, enchants me

 I am awake, yet I am asleep

Asleep to God, Awaken to my own desires

How many times have I turned away from God, knocking at the door to my heart?

When my heart takes me to sketchy URLs

That only pleasure me for mere moments

Where I momentarily forget my humanity, identity, forgetting that my father is knocking desperately

The wooden door to my heart turning to stone

But the Stone was rolled away, the ground began to shake

Christ rose from his three day sleep, in order to raise us to be awake in his Grace

Grace overflowed and washed my sins away

My doubts swept, away. My faith restored. Even though I was astray

I am, unfaithful, doubtful. I am, unloving.

But He simply says “I am who I am”

(I am) Your Faith, your Father

Your Love, your Lover,

I am.

When the waves and winds come crashing in

And Life shatters into a million pieces, falling through your fingers

He is there, to gather them, to pick them up, one by one,

to pick YOU up.

He holds your hands tightly, firmly

Comforting you with his Love, with Him

He loves you so so much

These scars on your hands

Scarred from trying to catch the shattered pieces

Your flesh, scarred from your past

He heals, he restores

Because He loves you

He simply knocks on the door to your coffin,

No matter how scarred and worn your hands are

He will hold them

No matter how battered and weary your soul is

He will hold you