Unearthed
For anyone who has ever worked in a garden, pruning, weeding, hoeing, planting, you will know that the earth does not yield its pleasures so easily. Hard labor, and nothing trite, is needed to unearth its beauty. Our soul can be hardest of grounds, and Jesus, the gentlest of gardeners.
Beneath the steely ground
Lay winter’s hidden fruit
Spring bid it show its face
Unearth its tangled roots
Of memories – dead stalks and vines
In tight embrace
Lo, a shadow above
A spade of grace
To unearth the dark things
Buried below
A web of lies, fears, deceit
Vows once seeded there
In dark sod deep
Soul cried
“But not the spade,
Not the light.”
Each root and bulb
Tightly wound in embrace
But the spade
With all its might
Came crashing down
Upon that place
Like the parting of waters
The rending of earth,
Musty and damp,
Cleaved in two
The ground
Rapturous light poured in from above
In the dark where things grew
Crowded and snarled
Hidden in these twisted things
Soul had grown cramped
Roughhewn hands brushed away
The creeping encroaching things
Pulled Soul from sand and sod
And gently placed it in His warm rich
Soil of love
Now, there is a bounty of
Beautiful things
A crop of flowers and fruit
Green tendrils unfurling
On the surface
And Soul sings glad
Of its offering
Bids the spade come
Meet the soil.