What Is Dying?

It has been asked, “What is dying?” Someone once described their thoughts in these words:

I’m standing on the seashore as a ship spreads her sails to the morning breeze and starts to the ocean. And someone at my side says,

“She is gone.”

But gone where? The loss at side is only in me, not in her. Just at that moment, someone on another shore begins to cry.

“Here she comes! Here she comes!”

For others are watching and waiting for her homecoming. Others pick up that glad cry.

“Here she comes!”

And this… is dying.

~ Anonymous

Plead To Certainty

I am but a human being
Unsure if I live in a dream
Consulting finite things
Exhausting infinite possibilities
With no certainty of reality
How do I know
If what I know is for certain?
Certainty places great demands upon me
Certainty demands the impossible
It demands I be doubt free!
But how can I be doubt free
Unless that which is certain
Makes itself known to me?
If one without perfect sight
Is without help of glasses
How will they read the sign
Before their life passes?
How will they read the sign
Which shows them the way?
Without glasses they cannot be certain
And will forever stray
If given these glasses
Their curtain will split
And after endless wondering
They would at last sit
But until glasses are given
They remain without sight
All fairy-tales are reality
And all wrongs remain right
What if one cries out to certainty
“Reveal yourself to me”
But is left with no response
Only to assure their defeat?
Certainty has great demands
It demands I be doubt free
So it seems I depend upon certainty
It must reveal itself to me
Yet I know what you will say
Not even such a statement
Can be known with certainty too
But don’t you see?
You are making my point
All the more true!
And so I leave you with this
When the somber awake their dream
How will they be for certain
And know things are what they seem?
How can I achieve the impossible
And one day be doubt free?
I have no way to know
I have no way to see
Unless that which is certain
Reveals itself to me

Most Mysterious Remedy

Jesus Christ both God and flesh
Oh what a strange yet perfect mesh
Only a man so completely Divine
May uphold the goodness
That I cannot find
Only if God were completely like I
Could He take my place on the cross to die
What is needed when my lot is death
In all my thoughts I cannot guess
I look up, I look down
I search high, I search low
I end my quest still left in sorrow
No one to bear my sin
No one at all
No one to bear my sin
Both great and small
Who will rid me of such curse
Surely there is no one in the universe
There is only one to take my sin
He is the peculiar Incarnation
How could this be
That God would be like me
And how could it be
That God should bleed
I would not have known
His blood would set me free
Of all possible acts
This most unfair
Of all hopeless gifts
His life not spared
Christ’s virgin birth
Did make Him God-Man
If He were only God
My penalty He would demand
If only human
There would be no substitute
For He too would be with sin
Christ’s virgin birth
Did make Him God-Man
That He might ransom me
Forever with Him to stand
All glory is now His
With our eternal applaud
When we see Him as He is