It deals with a part of my own testimony - the way in which I like many others, though in a more extreme way than most, had hardened myself against my own emotions; and in so doing crippled myself to an extent where I was no longer capable of feeling for anyone, or of undoing the damage I had done to myself.
The way in which Jesus has released my emotions since I became a Christian, and continues to teach me in this area, is one of the things for which I am most deeply grateful to him.
(Back to 'Loaves and Fishes.')
- I read your poems, and I understoood.
- - Not all of course; for who can merge themselves
- Fully into another's hopes and fears, but God?
- And yet I saw that this which has befallen you
- Did not happen suddenly, but reaches back
- Through long years of hurt, and sorrow,
- And hopes unfulfilled.
- Though a child no more, yet still you are a child,
- - child of sorrow -
- Hurting and longing for that warm embrace that enfolds you,
- Tells you all is well and, in the telling, makes it so.
- - And it does not come. How could it come again?
- I did a strange thing this morning.
- I cried.
- Not great, gulping, choking sobs, but tears
- That welled from the corners of my eyes,
- Blurring vision, and trickled slowly down.
- I might have wiped it in a moment,
- And the tears and the moment would have been no more.
- But to me, that teardrop running down my cheek
- Was a jewel worth more than diamonds.
- It was a testimony.
- I cried much as a child, of course,
- When every hurt and pain appeared to me
- The breaking of the world.
- 'Cry-baby' they called me.
- 'Grow up' they said.
- And their words fastened on my heart like wire barbs
- And grew until they had become iron bars.
- 'I'll grow up,' I vowed. 'I won't be hurt again.'
- And I made my heart a castle,
- My intellect its king.
- Emotion I banished I know not where,
- Until even diligent searching could not find it out
- Or reveal to me that feeling which men call love.
- Such was I when Jesus found me.
- - Cut off even from my own true self.
- He undid my folly, quickly at first
- And then more gently, bit by bit,
- As those imprisoned, stunted parts of me
- Began, uncertainly, to grow again.
- So it was this morning that I cried
- As we sang his praises,
- And I thought once more upon the Father God
- And on his Son,
- And on his all-consuming love,
- Which takes the child of sorrow, heals their hurt
- And in causing them to grow
- Makes them a child of joy again!
- Kevin King, 15/2/87