The Wall

I sit in front of the narrow way
it stretches
restricted
And all I see in front of me is a wall
Soul-less, soul-sucking, inviting despair
Composed of bricks of inadequacies and false adequacies
Fears and former dreams.
It is high, but not so high
A leap, a bound
I'd clear it and be on my way --
not so bad once the wall was passed
('til I reached the next) --
had I the strength.
Had I.
And that leap-able but unsurpassable height sits mocking me,
Reminding me I could be a saint if I could choose it.
And that one "if" echoes with the promise of an eternal nothing:
comfortable, safe, alone.
Heaven's a decision I'm not strong enough to make.
"You built me," the barrier mocks.
"I became more insurpassable with each moment you could not surpass yourself."
A necessary silence or a necessary smile that lay lingering in the air
unfulfilled.
Carpe Diem, seize the day;
What fool would defer, defer, then be no more?
The despairing choice of multitudes suddenly becomes clear.
My barrier built in a life of relative ease.
I cannot jump it,
not for my sake.
The prize mocks by its proximity:
"You could, if..."
The narrow way is simpler when it's vast
confusing
labyrinthine.
More hopeful when The Decision's deferred
To somewhere, somehow, down the line.
To if I turn the corners right.
Surely a single jump is not the only route?
Pushing, climbing, dismantling brick by brick.
But then I look to the side, and see Him.
Him on the cross with his arms stretched wide
In the widest embrace man has ever known
Wide enough to bridge the gap between creator and created
The eternal and the temporally bound
Wide enough for me and my wall besides,
And the width of his arms is the width of the narrow way.
I see how blind I've been
blind, blind, deliberately blind.
I broaden my gaze to match his, and I see the way
Not over, through, bounding, scraping
But around.
Slowly, sheepish, I peer, I look up.
I look around my wall and there He is
Has been
Eternally has been,
Hanging there as if to say "I have all eternity to wait for you."
His wounds more eloquent than any man can intertwine.
Inscribed in each of them are two simple, fatal words:
"I thirst."
Fatal because I could have chosen loneliness for myself, but not for Him.
Fatal for my faults, my fears, my former dreams,
Fatal for the wall which dissipates like so much smoke
Because it does not, cannot matter when He is there.
It does not, cannot span the chasm of his thirst,
I cannot cover it over, it yawns:
gaping, mawing, bleeding since the dawn of time.
Nowhere to run from wounds so vast I am engulfed.
"Come down. Come down because I will not come
Yet cannot leave you there."
Churlish, childish, I command:
Afraid because he found the point on which I cannot yield.
He does not answer, only hangs, hangs and loves,
And by His hanging writes my sentence,
the just penalty for every "No" I wish to fling against the promise of eternal joy:
"I hang, have hung, will hang, am eternally hung
For you
And I will not come down."
Precisely because I cannot, am naught and fulfill naught:
I must.
If He could be satisfied I'd look to stronger types.
Defer until He came down
To leave me for a better love.
But as He is helpless, hopeless,
Hopelessly in love,
I cannot leave Him there.
He nags me, loves me, baits me with His wounds
And sings,
Sings my name sweetly from the cross.
Each wound a note in an eternally written symphony.
I could be won with no earthly roses, but He bleeds me a garden,
An offer I cannot refuse:
"Come, come and bring your wall.
I'll make it mine,
If you but come.
Come, and follow me."