Eastern OrthodoxPoetryTheology & Spirituality

Reasonable Worship

I know I’m a sinner, of that I am sure
I am sick to the death and I need a cure
In fact I am dead and must be called forth
Totally bankrupt, of less than no worth
If there is no savior especially for me
If there was no battle to let me go free
If there was no righteousness traded for sin
There would be no life I could enter in
But how will I get it? Please, I must know
Everything must be defined and just so
Is it my choice? Is faith just a gift?
Do I get up first, or do I need a lift?
Must I first obey, are my works even mine?
Between faith and works is there even a line?
I just need a God I can understand
A God I can hold in a book in my hand
A God whom I can trust sovereignly
To be always in charge and let me be free
A God that is right since he’s just like me
Or at least the me I know I ought to be
Although wholly other beyond all my ken
So holy I can only bow down and amen

From that vantage point I can see clearly now
It doesn’t matter, the details of how
It only matters I fall on my face
Beg the king of all for his mercy and grace
He raises me up with an all-knowing look
And says it’s my name written down in his book
The story of him is the story of me
And bound up in him is the way I am free
To live and not die, and die so I can live
It’s what he took me for: so he can forgive
He is the savior, therefore I am saved
I have faith in the hands on which I am engraved
Nothing else matters: not freedom, not choice
He is my king, I can’t help but rejoice

Kenneth O'Shaughnessy

Kenneth O'Shaughnessy

A Northerner by upbringing, Kenneth has lived in the South since his (first) college days. After returning to college, he began to do more than just dabble with writing, and has self-published a children's picture book, a middle-reader's book, and several collections of poetry. Baptized in the Roman Catholic church, raised in the fundamentalist Baptist church, and having spent time in the Reformed Baptist church, Kenneth settled down in the Eastern Orthodox church in 2006.

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