Gleaning

Do you ever feel overcome with emotions that just keep bubbling to the surface? Have you not wanted to go there, not wanting to feel the depths of your anguish? 

Are you carrying such an overwhelming yearning for the promises of God to be revealed that this very yearning has become too painful to even sit with? Then, perhaps, this poem God gifted me will speak to you too.

I listen

In the stillness

Gleaning

Cadence of the hooves

Songs of morning birds

Gleaning love

Abandoned in the rush.

I settle in Your seat

Remembering

The waves

The rush and crash

And seeing

How You

Wept.

Tears

For every moment

I withheld my trust

Believing

Holding tight

Is faith.

Oh precious

In Your sight

Are those

Who die to self

Who know they are

Welcome here.

Welcome

As the waves return

Lapping, crashing

Thunderous

There they come.

Welcome

To lean

Upon the Rock

And not succumb

But in Your arms

Become.

For in the stillness

In the listening

So far

From striving’s tongue

You’re teaching me

Who You

Truly are.

A Father

So tender

A Love

Full of mercy

Who holds me

In His arms

As our tears

Release.

For faith

Is not my own

But Your laboring

In me.

It’s believing

Not in my

Own strength

But in the One

Whose love in me

Speaks

Steadfast, sure.

A sun-drenched warmth

Beneath my feet

The sun here shimmering

In morning’s light

A testament

To Your mercies

New every morning

That carry me

In wave after wave

Into love everlasting.

And so I remain here

Seeking the quiet

And let the waves return

My heart now cleaving

To Your heart

Washing my face

With the tears of our longing

Awakening life.

I listen

In the stillness

Gleaning

Cadence of the hooves

Songs of morning birds

Gleaning Your heartbeat

Never abandoned

My God is always with me.

Those ransomed by Yahweh will return, and come with singing to Zion. Everlasting joy shall be on their heads. They will obtain gladness and joy. Sorrow and sighing shall flee away. Isaiah 51:11 WEB

Know that you are not alone in your grief. Oh, how often it has all felt like too much to carry for me too. But God keeps reminding me that yes, that burden of His heart for the lost crying out inside of me is, in fact, too much to carry. Too much in my own strength. Yet, not too much when we are carried in Christ’s strength: carried in His arms, which are outstretched for us and for all those our hearts are so burdened for in prayer. May you feel those arms carrying you today as you glean together with me, knowing our Lord does not reproach us in our need, just as Boaz told his workers not to reproach Ruth for gleaning among the sheaves. 

When she rose to glean, Boaz instructed his young men, saying, “Let her glean even among the sheaves, and do not reproach her. And also pull out some from the bundles for her and leave it for her to glean, and do not rebuke her.”  Ruth 2:15–16 ESV

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