Who am I, Lord, that you should consider me? On the scale of your creation I may as well be an inanimate piece of dust floating on the solar wind, even the solar wind of a star whose light would never reach this galaxy. Even your creation gobbles me up. How much you yourself. Yet my sin was bigger than all that to you; it screamed out among the galaxies and burned your ears. You made me to worship you, but I became a being that apalled you with the horrible things I did. My sins made you do something the angels would have never dreamed you would do. You left them. Wouldn't that boggle even heavenly wisdom: that the God who made all things, he who is faithful and true, whose purity cries out to every corner of every dimension, who is worthy of every drop of worship that could exist would leave the mighty rivers of heaven to be slain on the deserts of earth. You left the perfect worship of angels, the worship of Michael and Gabriel even, and were born in a place where the was not even room for you. I am brought to tears how aweful you were treated. Even your own brothers hated you. The sun, which you created, beat down on you in the dry summers. It hated you, its heat made you sweat and you suffered from thirst. Why should God have to suffer? Cursed and beaten; no one recognized you. You yelled from the mountains, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me!" Who listened? They only hated you more. They increased your suffering. They mocked you, they called you names. They spat in your face. They hurt your feelings. They did not recognize you. Your Old Enemy, the Prince of this World, he hated you more. You were susceptible to his beatings. Wasn't he your friend once; could he not worship you more beautifully than any other being? Yet he twisted your wrists, he struck your heal. But even in the weakness of your flesh you would not submit. You found only a trickle of worship here. Did you ever crave the oceans in heaven? There were crowds who wanted your miracles, there was a handful who wanted you. There was one who walked on water to touch you, another washed your feet with her tears, still a few more weeped and weeped when you had died. And you died for a generation of cursed and stricken people who sucker-punched you in the gut all the way. One of your closest friends sold you out to death for the mere fortune of 30 pieces of silver. Wasn't that just a simple element you had designed in the spoken ages of creation's birth? It was the price of your death. I weep again. Judas should have weeped and weeped when the thought had only entered his mind. I shut my mouth knowing my sin paid for more of your death's price than any weight of silver or gold. You stood on trial as a criminal, yet you were the opposite of a criminal. You were the judge being judged by the criminals. They could not decided how much they hated you so they wipped you violently so you were weak and bleeding, yet I myself, I would not have been satisfied with that if I had been there, for my sin is as thirsty as a desert. They brought you back and insulted you. Your back was ragged yet they continued to jeer, slap, and spit. You took it. What punishment did you deserve? How humiliating was it when they begged for a murderer to be freed to them instead of you? I weep again and again. Sweet Jesus, you said not a thing, even when I screamed myself for you to be crucified. Their mouths were created to sing beautiful songs of worship in voices that would harmonize and melt your heart in love. Their riotous raucous screamed so hysterically, "Crucify him!" They wanted nothing but your death. It was anti-worship. You were made to carry your own cross, the very object on which you would be slain. The wood was hewn from a tree you had commanded to grow; you knew its ancestors back to the sapling that sprouted from the dirt of early earth before the name of Adam was spoken. The hands that should have embraced you with love smashed nails through your wrists. If you screamed in pain you were told to shut-up. Then you were lifted up and put on display.
"Is that even the figure of a man?" Yes, it is my Jesus, and it is my own sin and hate that made him allow himself to be lifted up. And it was my own sin upon him that made him alone, for he called to his Father, and his Father heard nothing, he could not bear to look at his Son. Then he died. They stabbed him in the side just to make sure. They would have rejoiced if they were not terrified by the darkness and the rumblings. What a fickle creature is man that he can turn from hate to fear so suddenly. When he rose from the dead only a few rejoiced. Everyone else made up stories. Foolishness is their god. But those other few made this Quiet Splendor their God because true wisdom was given to them, that though he left quietly, his love among this hateful would prove him worthy to return to earth with the pealing of mighty thunders, the blowing of trumpets, the rushing of water and wind so that every head on earth will turn to the East as the White Rider descends in glory on a river of the worship of Heaven. He will reap the harvest of earth. The grain will be gathered into his silos, but the thistles will be burned up in the depths of hell. And those who have hoped in him will finally find the voice they lost in the Garden. In one voice, in one accord, in a most beautiful harmony they will sing, "Salvation belongs to our God who sits upon the throne. And unto the Lamb!"
