Yantalo - a poem

Yantaló



Our Lord blesses us;
We who are so certain
In the security of our lives;
With the vision of insecurity
In the bodies of the poor.

Our Lord blesses us;
We who are so aggressive
In the strength of our lives;
With the vision of frailty
In the bodies of the poor.

Our Lord blesses us;
We who are so casual about life
In our self-satisfied complacency;
With the testimony of the weight of life
In the bodies of the poor.

When our eyes have been opened,
And our other senses have been sharpened,
And our hearts have been made to feel
Only a small part of the weight of the poor,
Then we have been prepared for the
Presence of the Lord.

Our Lord blesses us,
We who fear poverty,
With the courage of the poor.

Our Lord blesses us,
We who falter at the least inconvenience,
With the endurance of the poor.

Our Lord blesses us,
We who treat our communities shamefully,
With the hospitality of the poor.

We would not welcome a stranger
So well as we are welcomed.
We would not offer our own fatted calf.

Yet we are graced with the best food,
In a house of rough-hewn beams
And a dirt floor where chickens
Hunt around our feet
For scraps from our table.

When our eyes have seen the light,
And our other senses have come to life,
And our hearts have been broken
By the weight of the poor;
A small dying child is placed
On a table before us.

Like an offering on an altar,
His father lays him before us
Only a few steps from where we labor
Digging a foundation for the church
At Yantaló.

He is our Isaac.
And his weight is too heavy for our
Broken hearts to bear up toward the light.
What can we do?
Except, as Father Abraham;
Let the weight of the dying boy
Fall upon us.

We do not know the Hope that is in us,
Until we are crushed;
Every last measure of our own strength
Defeated.
Until our own wisdom is made into dust,
We do not know the Hope that is in us.

Then a voice that is in us,
Not a voice of our own strength or wisdom,
Sings Hope into our hearts:
"God Himself will provide the Lamb of offering."