Resurrection Sunday, 2007
I am sick and weak and burned and cold and all my blood has run out. I am decayed, I am dying. The wind blows and it blows through me. The storm rages and I am tossed about. My voice is dead, I gasp on air, and fumes blacken my lungs.
They say the fount is the cure.
I stand at its stony lip. I cannot go in. It flows and glistens in the fitful light, thick and treacherous. I have a horrible feeling it might be blood.
How can it do me any good? It looks more poison than purity, the spill of a shameful sacrifice, the rent flesh of death. I know what it would do if I got in. It would get in me. It would flow over me with all its heaviness, all its pervasiveness, it would flow into me, through eyes and ears and mouth and nose and there would be no part of me untouched. I would be dyed with it. It would kill me.
Might it be so bad to carry my burden so much farther? I have carried it so far. But my back is breaking. Would it be so terrible to endure the pain so much longer? I have endured it so long. But it is sapping my sanity. I have had these wounds, these scars, this sickness for so many years, they are mine, why should I give them up? I cling to my wretchedness a little harder.
I have seen the agony of those who go in. I have heard their screams.
They say the fount is the cure.
I am terrified.
I put in my foot, thinking I might test it, but once I touch it there is no going back. As I knew, as I feared, it has me, and it pulls me in. It is a flame crawling up my skin, it is a gale in my bones, and I cry out, and even my cry is ripped from me. For as I go down my flesh is torn from my frame. The fount pours into me, and I cannot stop it.
I go in.
It sears. It roils. All of me is taken in its ruthless fire. And when I think I can take no more, long past endurance, long past life, I die.
And the long-rolling pain washes into something else.
The fount has got into my eyes and ears and nose and mouth, it has got into my lungs and stomach and heart, it has got in my veins and it flows through me, to each limb, to each cell, to the source of my soul, and there takes root.
I arise.
Rivulets of red run down my head, my face, my shoulders, my back, my arms and my legs. With new lips I draw the air. I see, and I have never seen before. I hear, and I have never heard before. I breathe, and I have never breathed before, sweet in the air and strong. The storm yet rages but I am part of it, the lightning that arcs through the sky. The wind yet blows and I am in it, the song that sweeps the world.
There is no sickness left in me, no weariness, no fear. All that is purged away. All through me is renewed, remade, refreshed, as I should have been, as I wanted to be. In the fount I expect to find the dead skin of my last life, small and broken and frail and pitiful, all that I thought I needed, but of it there is no trace, there is only the flow that saved me. A shadow in my memory is all that remains, and it only casts the rest brighter.
I lift my shining and whole arm toward the light, the light that still burns but with life and not death. I am stained through, and I am clean.
There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Immanuel's veins
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains.
He is risen! He is risen indeed!
They say the fount is the cure.
I stand at its stony lip. I cannot go in. It flows and glistens in the fitful light, thick and treacherous. I have a horrible feeling it might be blood.
How can it do me any good? It looks more poison than purity, the spill of a shameful sacrifice, the rent flesh of death. I know what it would do if I got in. It would get in me. It would flow over me with all its heaviness, all its pervasiveness, it would flow into me, through eyes and ears and mouth and nose and there would be no part of me untouched. I would be dyed with it. It would kill me.
Might it be so bad to carry my burden so much farther? I have carried it so far. But my back is breaking. Would it be so terrible to endure the pain so much longer? I have endured it so long. But it is sapping my sanity. I have had these wounds, these scars, this sickness for so many years, they are mine, why should I give them up? I cling to my wretchedness a little harder.
I have seen the agony of those who go in. I have heard their screams.
They say the fount is the cure.
I am terrified.
I put in my foot, thinking I might test it, but once I touch it there is no going back. As I knew, as I feared, it has me, and it pulls me in. It is a flame crawling up my skin, it is a gale in my bones, and I cry out, and even my cry is ripped from me. For as I go down my flesh is torn from my frame. The fount pours into me, and I cannot stop it.
I go in.
It sears. It roils. All of me is taken in its ruthless fire. And when I think I can take no more, long past endurance, long past life, I die.
And the long-rolling pain washes into something else.
The fount has got into my eyes and ears and nose and mouth, it has got into my lungs and stomach and heart, it has got in my veins and it flows through me, to each limb, to each cell, to the source of my soul, and there takes root.
I arise.
Rivulets of red run down my head, my face, my shoulders, my back, my arms and my legs. With new lips I draw the air. I see, and I have never seen before. I hear, and I have never heard before. I breathe, and I have never breathed before, sweet in the air and strong. The storm yet rages but I am part of it, the lightning that arcs through the sky. The wind yet blows and I am in it, the song that sweeps the world.
There is no sickness left in me, no weariness, no fear. All that is purged away. All through me is renewed, remade, refreshed, as I should have been, as I wanted to be. In the fount I expect to find the dead skin of my last life, small and broken and frail and pitiful, all that I thought I needed, but of it there is no trace, there is only the flow that saved me. A shadow in my memory is all that remains, and it only casts the rest brighter.
I lift my shining and whole arm toward the light, the light that still burns but with life and not death. I am stained through, and I am clean.
There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Immanuel's veins
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains.
He is risen! He is risen indeed!